Grammar Focus: Navigating Subject-Verb Agreement...

... in British and American English!

Have you ever heard someone say, "The band are playing tonight," and another say, "The band is playing tonight," and wondered which one is correct? The answer, as is often the case with the English language, is: it depends! Specifically, it often depends on whether the speaker is using British English or American English, particularly when it comes to subject-verb agreement with collective nouns.

Collective nouns are words that refer to a group of people or things. Think of words like team, government, family, company, committee, audience, staff, and crew. While these nouns are singular in form, they represent a collection of individuals. This is where the grammatical paths of British and American English diverge in interesting ways, influenced by the long and rich history of the language and the subtle shifts in how these groups are perceived.

The British Perspective: Emphasising the Individuals

In British English, there's a stronger tendency to treat collective nouns as plural when the focus is on the individual members of the group acting separately. The logic here is that while "team" is one word, it represents multiple players, each with their own actions. Therefore, you'll often hear and read sentences like:

• The team are celebrating their victory. (Each member is celebrating.)

• The government have announced new economic policies. (Individual members of the government made the announcement.)

• My family are all arriving for the holidays. (Each family member is arriving.)

• The company are holding their annual general meeting. (The individual directors and shareholders are attending.)

• The audience were clapping enthusiastically. (Each person in the audience was clapping.)

In these cases, the verb takes the plural form (are, have, were). This approach emphasises the idea of the collective noun as a group made up of individual actors.

However, it's important to note that British English also uses the singular verb form when the collective noun is seen as a single, unified entity acting as one: