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Monday, May 5, 2008

Subject Verb Agreement: Collective Nouns

What are collective nouns?
Collective nouns may appear plural but are in fact singular in form. These nouns appear plural because the noun may incorporate many people or things. The group of people or things, however, is viewed as a single group and not as single individuals.
  • army, navy
  • group, association, organization
  • team, band
  • college, school

Examples
ERROR: The band play alternative rock and classic rock.
CORRECTION: The band plays alternative rock and classic rock.


ERROR: My homeowner's association have raised my fees for next year.
CORRECTION: My homeowner's association has raised my fees for next year.



Singular subjects need singular verbs and singular verbs end in -s.
Plurals subjects need plural verbs and plural verbs have no -s ending.

2 comments:

  1. Namaste' Fearless, I must admit I am not always the very best at my proper collective noun skills. ;0)and sometimes I stare at what I may write, and go over the errs over and over and still not get them right ha ha.

    In fact sometimes I forget a lot of proper language skills in writing, that some teachers would be like "Skylar, da da da" I am so much better with my hands somedays.

    Ahhh, well, leave it to this blog site to remind me every once in a while. ;0)

    metta
    sky

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL, I am so glad your "wrong" use of these nouns wasn't a quote from my blog!(grin)

    ReplyDelete

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