Page 104 - Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking

Collective nouns name groups of things, people, or animals.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ army audience batch board class committee company department

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ family firm herd majority public school team Even though a collective
noun contains two or more members, in North American English it behaves

as a singular. I specify “North American English” because in the United
Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, a collective noun can

behave like a plural.

■ Good in US, Bad in UK: The army is ready for maneuvers. The team

is playing as never before.
■ Good in UK, Bad in US: The army are ready for maneuvers. The
team are playing as never before.

If the individual members of a collective noun are not acting together, you
can use the plural verb form with the collective noun as if it were a normal

plural.

■ The committee are starting their own investigations.

■ When beginning the research, the class have a lot of different ways to
collect data.

■ If that sounds awkward, you can usually reword it: The committee
members are starting their own investigations.

■ When beginning the research, the class members have a lot of
different ways to collect data.

8.3.1 FUN COLLECTIVE NOUNS

You may have come across long lists of collective nouns for animals, such as a

murder of crows or a quiver of cobras. As fun as they are, many of the items
exist only on those lists. They are not used in normal prose. They are known as

stunt words, which means language created to amuse or impress. My advice is to