Are collective nouns always plural, or are certain ones singular?

Question

I'd say Microsoft have a way of bending the rules and I know that McLaren have won the championship. While this sounds strange, I believe it is correct English (sorry, I'm not native).

But when it's a small company, would you still use it this way? Is a company always plural, or are small companies singular? I.e., would you say Bakery Johnson makes fine bread or Bakery Johnson make fine bread? Is it My book seller, Woody's, have moved or is it has moved?

Answer 1

These company names are collective nouns. In general, in American English collective nouns almost always trigger singular verb agreement (after all, "Microsoft" is grammatically a singular noun, even if semantically it denotes an entity made up of many people). It is apparently much more common to use plural verb agreement in British English. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the company.

Lots of good information here: Language Log on collective nouns, etc.

Answer 2

British English treats collective nouns (corporations, departments, etc.) as plural. American English treats them as singular. The size of the group is irrelevant.

Answer 3

I think it is most people's tendency to infer the people at the company as those doing the action described ("bending the rules") and therefore the plural sounds correct when that is the message you are trying to put across.

When it is the company as a single corporate entity, the singular works better ("Microsoft has bought Acme Widgets", "Acme has a great policy on renewable energy"). For this reason I would say "Woody's has moved" as I presume the entire company, stock and staff all went together.

You may find that some smaller companies deliberately use the plural when they want to emphasise the personal nature of things, real people doing/making stuff, or they will tend towards the singular when they want to sound bigger and more businesslike. "Acme recycles used paper" sounds like a corporate policy rather than the whim of one or more members of staff, even if there is only one person there.

It also leads to me to think about the corporate "we" - "At Microsoft, we write great software" is only true of a very small proportion of their staff who are actually developers/testers/project managers (arguably), and not of all staff such as sales and marketing etc. (I'm not getting into a debate about the proportion of MS software which is or is not great, save it for techcrunch).

Answer 4

I'm English (brought up near Oxford), and usually use the plural. For example, I used to work with an organisation called the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and I was accustomed to writing “the IFS are”, not “the IFS is”. Or, speaking of local politics: “Oxford City Council do not build enough council houses”, rather than “Oxford City Council does not build enough council houses”. I didn't consciously decide to use this syntax: it's just how I was brought up, so is probably typical of British English, at least in my part of England.

I've just discovered an ambiguity which strengthens my habit. There was a recent legal case where Google forced the founder of a cheap-alcohol-search Web site to change its name from Groggle to Drinkle. Should I write “Google have a lot of lawyers” or “Google has a lot of lawyers”? The latter is ambiguous, because “Google” in the singular could denote the search engine. Which, not being animate, doesn’t own lawyers or anything else. Using the plural eliminates the ambiguity.

Jccelyn Ireson-Paine

Answer 5

A corporate entity is a singular proper noun, so the above sentence ought to read "Microsoft has a way of bending the rules". If it helps, replace the proper noun with the definite article, e.g. "the company" in this case, and rephrase to suit.

Answer 6

The plural always look wrong to me. Would you ever say "Microsoft are a big company"?

Answer 7

Normally a company name is going to be singular. However there are times where a company name refers to a collection of entities.

Abel and Associates, Jones Law Offices, Smith Companies, Johnson Bakeries

In these cases the plural form would be correct.

Answer 8

First of all, the choice has nothing to do with the size of the company, on any measure.

Traditionally, companies are singular (they are, after all, a single entity separate from their members, employees, or directors), and take the pronoun 'it'. However, modern usage tends to include treating the name as a collective noun instead, and using the pronoun 'they'.

I usually treat company names as a collective noun, except when the company primarily exists solely as a legal entity, and not a trading entity that employees people (because there is no body of persons to describe, especially if it has only a single member).