Collective Nouns are Singular

By Abhishek Tomar on Aug 20, 2009 with Comments 0

The specialty of collective noun is that they look singular (it does not include “S”) but refers to a group of people. Some of the example includes:

Administration, army, class, crowd, faculty, team, audience

Collective noun is always considered singular and are therefore requires singular verb forms. For Example :

The crowd IS cheering as the home team TAKES the field

Our army IS attacking the enemy

Each “Crowd” and “army” is collective noun and takes singular verb form

Indefinite Pronouns: Usually Singular

Pronouns are words that take the place of the noun. Like HE, SHE, etc. But there are pronouns that are indefinite and cannot be defined either singular or plural. ANYONE is one such example of Indefinite Pronoun. Note the following pronoun take the place of the singular form and therefore requires singular verb form. Words ending with -one , -body, -things falls in such category.

But there are 5 indefinite Pronouns that are neither singular nor plural but takes the form in respect of the sentence context, these 5 indefinite Pronouns are know as SANAM

The SANAM Pronouns: Some, Any, None, All, Most

How can you tell me that the SANAM are plural or singular? Few step back I talked about “OF’ as the middlemen and should be left while determining the verb form. Now here is the EXCEPTION of this rule. SANAM are exception to this rule, here you have to look at the “OF’ to define the verb form. Confused here is an example

Some of the money WAS stolen from the pocket (Money is singular form)

Some of the documents WERE stolen from the Bank (Documents is plural form)

“Each” and “Every”: EXCEPTION RULE

If you were a careful reader than we have just talked that the sentence containing “Each” or “Every” are takes the singular form. The same is true with subject preceded by these two words such as:

Every dog HAS paws

Every Dog and cat HAS Paws

Each of these shirts IS Pretty

Now this rule is true only when nothing precedes the words “Each” and “Every” BUT when something precedes these words than this rule is dropped and the preceding word determines the verb form. Lets see the Example of the following:

They each ARE getting tennis players.

Here is the plural THEY and Verb ARE