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The army ordered the zoo to kill all the wild animals. It thought that the animals would get away and harm people if a bomb hits the zoo.

Is it grammatical to use the verb 'thought' to refer to an action of a collective group referred to with the pronoun 'it' in the second sentence? Or is it more proper to say that "the members of the army thought..."?

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    There is a problem with identifying which subset of 'the army' is synechdochally involved, which complicates this particular (and probably many similar) examples. This makes J. Taylor's workaround (which does make an improvement) still rather woolly.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 23:33
  • I agree Edwin Ashworth. ... I would have started over, had this been a edit for publication. But, the OP says it is from an already published source.
    – J. Taylor
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 23:43
  • I doubt the members of the army had much opportunity to weigh in. Aren't they trained not to think? // The army ordered the zoo to kill all the wild animals. Officials thought that the animals would get out and harm people if a bomb were to hit the zoo.
    – aparente001
    Commented Feb 18, 2017 at 5:35
  • Using "it" to refer to "the army" is not a concern, cf. "The army was so concerned about safety that it thought it necessary to withdraw the guns".
    – BillJ
    Commented Feb 18, 2017 at 10:24

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"It" is ambiguous. A reader might not immediately understand what "it" is.
A simple solution would be:

The army ordered the zoo to kill all the wild animals, thinking that the animals would get away and harm people if a bomb hits the zoo.

This would remove any danger of a reader being confused.

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  • I don't think this solves the problem.
    – aparente001
    Commented Feb 18, 2017 at 5:33
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It is at least confusing - I read your example as "It is thought that ... " which is normal and grammatical, but does not suggest that it is the army doing the thinking.

In British English, I think nearly everybody would use "they thought" (meaning the army), without even noticing there was anything odd about this. I know that American authorities tend to insist on using singular verbs with collective nouns, but I don't know where they stand on the pronouns.

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  • Thanks a lot Colin. I would also use "they thought" in the second sentence but this is actually a story in a book where the pronoun 'it' is used in many sentences to refer to the army. The second sentence is an answer to a question after the story. I just don't know how I can justify or explain the change to 'they' from 'it'. And using the word 'thought' after 'it' doesn't sound correct either.
    – SES
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 23:37
  • @SES The insistence on strict formal agreement after collective nouns etc does lead to real problems where 'the army' etc is used for 'all the members of the army' / 'the executive' / 'the officers involved' etc.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 23:42

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