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Collective plurals are groups of items described as a single unit, such as a litter of kittens or a platoon of troops. They require singular or plural verbs and pronouns depending on whether the group acts together or separately. Mistakes are common, and different forms of English treat them differently.
A collective plural is a group of items described as a single unit, such as a litter of kittens or a platoon of troops. Learning to use collective plurals in speech is a bit tricky, because the collective plural can act together, or individuals in the group can act separately, requiring respectively singular and plural verbs, pronouns, and so on. Collective plurals are also used differently in different forms of English; for example, in Britain, it is common to see phrases such as “Parliament has passed a law,” treating Parliament in the plural, whereas American English speakers would likely say “Parliament has passed a law,” treating Parliament as an entity singular.
While a collective plural is often treated as a single thing, it’s important to remember that a collective plural requires a group of individuals. A flock of geese, for example, requires at least two geese, and a kill of crows needs two or more crows. Collective plurals are sometimes referred to as “collective nouns,” and many common nouns have a collective form, such as a bunch of flowers, a group of trees, and so on.
When you use a collective plural, you need to decide whether the members of the group are acting in concert or are doing different things. For example, a herd of goats collectively bound across a meadow as a group, but individual members of the herd might split up to do different things, like go to their favorite spots to nap. If the group acts together, you should use singular verbs and pronouns, such as “soft” above, treating it as a unit, while a group with members acting in different ways should be treated as a plural.
When you start thinking about how to use a collective plural in a sentence, it can sometimes be helpful to play around with the language you’re using to determine whether the plural should be treated as a collective singular or as a group of individuals. You can replace a true plural noun with a collective plural, for example, to determine whether or not a sentence sounds weird, or you can add a clarifying term to a sentence to see if it still makes sense, using “jury members” instead of “jury ” or “players” instead of “team”.
Mistakes of agreement are common when people use a collective plural, and these mistakes are sometimes further confused by the lack of hard and fast rules that sometimes get even professionals wrong. Sometimes a phrase is technically correct, but still sounds wrong, so people aren’t always looking for a perfect chord. However, you should be careful doing this, because sometimes your decision to use something that sounds more comfortable can change the meaning of the sentence in a way you don’t expect.
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