Editing Made Easy by Bruce Kaplan

Author:Bruce Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Upper Access, Inc.
Published: 2012-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

collective nouns

which verb form do I use?

A collective noun is a singular word for a group of people, animals or objects. For example:

a class of students

a flock of birds

a herd of cows

Because collective nouns are singular, they take a singular verb. Thus we have:

the audience is

the class is

the club is

the committee is

the crew is

the family is

the fire brigade is

the flock is

the group is

the herd is

the police force is

the team is

Green Bay (football team) is

However, when writing about individuals who make up a group, or when the name of a team, group or club ends with an s, we use the plural verb are:

audience members are

the students are

club members are

committee members are

crew members are

family members are

fire brigade officers are

the birds are

group members are

the cows are

the police officers are

team members are

Baltimore players are

Green Bay players are

the Baltimore Orioles are

the Green Bay Packers are

Collective nouns offer plenty of room for debate and variation.

For example, the word couple (as in man and wife). Couple certainly is a collective noun. Therefore we technically should write:

The couple is going to different classes.

A couple was rescued after its car went over a cliff.

But this can sound awkward and sometimes plain silly (is, was, its). The secret is to regard a couple as two entities—and use a regular plural:

The couple are going to different classes.

A couple were rescued after their car went over a cliff.

The same situation applies to the word family. We can regard a family as one unit (collective noun) or as a number of people (plural).

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