Timeline for Collective nouns and subject-verb agreement: general rule or arbitrary, looking at 'police' specifically?
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| Feb 5, 2022 at 17:10 | comment | added | Stuart F | I think a lot of confusion is because of expressions like this, where something is metaphorical or a personification (treating a group as if it was a single person) or just an unusual usage. If something sounds odd, a speaker may change the verb to match other usages: if something is normally done by one person, using a singular and if it's done by a group of people using a plural. | |
| Jul 6, 2014 at 20:53 | history | answered | user58319 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |