Collective Nouns

[21C]

I've been a stickler about what I consider correct usage of English. Every so often, there's a thread here that brings up people's personal hates with wrong terms and spellings. There has been a similar discussion in the letters' pages of my newspaper about the correct use of the singular or plural when using a collective noun like committee, jury or family.

I've always stood by the ( supposed ) fact that collective nouns use the singular. Appararently this is not the case in Britain - and Australia - anymore. One of the people in the paper quoted askoxford.com which is the website for the Oxford dictionary. This is what they say:

Collective nouns can be used with either a singular verb (my family was always hard-working) or a plural verb (his family were disappointed in him). Generally speaking, in Britain it is more usual for collective nouns to be followed by a plural verb while in the US the opposite is true.

Well, I'll be buggered!

When did this fact get past me? I'm glad to hear that Americans are getting it right but when did we start corrupting something that I was taught in school.

[finkenst]

because the brits wanted to make sure the americans were messing the language... like we usually do.

[AlexB]

I've always used the plural after a collective noun: makes sense to me - if you're talking about a 'collective' noun, surely this explicitly states that you are talking about a number of people, which then requires that you use a plural form of the verb?

[Ksyrup]

This is something that has always bothered me, and I've even fallen into using the verbs incorrectly just because I appear to be in the clear minority. But I still insist that when talking about things like teams and bands, the singular verb should be used. I'm only talking about one team or band, so I'm clearly not talking about all of the people who make up the team/band. When I do that, I use plural ("The members of System of a Down are Armenian.").

I think the main reason using plural has become so common is because it's easier to use one consistent type of verb in all such occasions, and while saying, "The Who is a legendary rock band" sounds fine, saying, "The Beatles is the most influential rock band of all time" does not.

Same with sports teams - The Heat is going to win the NBA Championship vs. The Cardinals is going to win the World Series. Even though I'm clearly talking about one team in each of those sentences, it just sounds better to go with plural.

[21C]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Same with sports teams - The Heat is going to win the NBA Championship vs. The Cardinals is going to win the World Series. Even though I'm clearly talking about one team in each of those sentences, it just sounds better to go with plural.

That's where I hear it the most and is most grating to me. Your examples sound perfectly reasonable but I hate it when I hear "Sydney are leading the game at the moment" or "Australia have won the match". I know that in the Sydney example it would sound strange to say "The Swans is winning" but you are using a plural for a team - much like the Beatles case.

Like I said, my confidence is shattered. What's next? 'Your' is OK now when mean 'you are'?

[Ksyrup]

I agree - when talking about the city/state of the team name, it should almost always be easy enough to use the singular. Very rarely should how it sounds cause any problems. I understand people having problems with using singluar for team names that end with 's'. If you insist on doing it, people just look at you weird.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Same with sports teams - The Heat is going to win the NBA Championship vs. The Cardinals is going to win the World Series. Even though I'm clearly talking about one team in each of those sentences, it just sounds better to go with plural.

Using the term "is," even if correct, does sound bad in those situations. I picture Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel saying something like "The Heat is going to win the NBA Championship."