Grammar Tip 30: Subject/Verb Agreement I

Look out for collective words in English - crowd, public, group, team, staff, family, community.

They can take both plural and singular verbs.


Have a look at these two sentences.

The general public has a right to know what happened.
The public have voted on which song they think should win the competition.

Both use the word 'public'. But the word does not mean the same in each case. The first sentence uses a singular verb; the second uses a plural verb.

'Public' is one of many collective words in English that can be used with both plural and singular verbs. The singular is usually used when the public is seen as a whole unit - as in 'the general public' in the first example above. The plural is usually used when the public is seen as a group of individuals or a section of the population - as in 'the public' in the second example.

However, there are no fixed rules about this. It often depends on the situation.

Other collective words include:

audience, class, college, committee, community, crowd, council, counsel, enemy, family, government, group, jury, parliament, press, school, staff, team, university

Sometimes the singular is needed to show that a whole organisation is referred to as an institution or a single thing:

The school is closing for two weeks.
The staff is growing at a fast pace.
The community around here is very mixed.
Today's crowd is enormous.

The plural form indicates that the whole group is not acting as one unit, but as a group of individuals:

The staff are happy with the proposal.
The audience are very restless tonight.
The jury are undecided.
The crowd are really enjoying the day's play.

But sometimes there is hardly any difference between singular and plural uses:

The team are playing well/The team is playing well.
The class are putting on a play/The class is putting on a play.
The family is divided/The family are divided.

On the whole, the plural is more common than the singular.

Note: 'People' always has a plural verb in English. 'Police' almost always has a plural verb.