From: Green, Tom <TGreen_at_CWF.org>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:21:50 -0400

Andreas and Christi,

 

It appears that it depends on whether you're talking about "American" or
"British" English.

 

See: http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000193.htm ; First example.

 

"The only significant difference I can think of is that the British
sometimes treat collective nouns as plural where the Americans treat
them as singular."

 

So, in the US, only "The Rockbox team is justifiably proud..." is
correct.

 

Interesting difference, FWIW.

 

Tom

 

 

----------------------------------------------

(snip)

> The Rockbox team are justifiably proud...

>

> As a non-native English speaker, I was wondering why this is correct

> English. Shouldn't it be

>

> The Rockbox team is justifiably proud...

>

> because team is singular?

>

> Andreas

-------------------------------------------

AND:

 

(snip)

> Team is singular, but also refers in this case to a collection of

> people. I believe both usages would be accepted in common English,

> although those of a pedantic bent may well agree with you.

 

(snip)

> In general "is" and "are" are both accepted when there are a countable

> number of things in the collective entity (such as developers in the

> Rockbox team). Uncountable or indistinguishable collective entities

> (such as water, salt or sand) are always singular and usually have an

> associated noun to refer to a small quantity of them ("grain of

> salt/sand", "drop of water"). So "the salt was on the table" and "the

> grains of salt were on the table" are both correct.

>

> Christi

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Received on 2004-06-24