40d Making verbs agree with collective nouns
Collective nouns—such as family, team, audience, group, jury, crowd, band, class, and committee—refer to a group. Collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms, depending on whether they refer to the group as a single unit or to the multiple members of the group. The meaning of a sentence as a whole is your guide to whether a collective noun refers to a unit or to the multiple parts of a unit.
The jury acts as a single unit.
The members of the jury act as multiple individuals.
Family here refers to the many ducks; they cannot scatter as one.
Treat fractions that refer to singular nouns as singular and those that refer to plural nouns as plural.
| SINGULAR | Two-thirds of the park has burned. |
| PLURAL | Two-thirds of the students were commuters. |
Treat phrases starting with the number of as singular and with a number of as plural.
| SINGULAR | The number of applicants for the internship was unbelievable. |
| PLURAL | A number of applicants were put on the waiting list. |