Choosing agreeable verbs for collective nouns
The Monitor鈥檚 copy editors needed to make a difficult call on a photo caption. The choices were: 鈥淎 pair of panels decorated with thousands of seeds mark the entryway鈥� or 鈥淎 pair of panels decorated with thousands of seeds marks the entryway.鈥� Whichever they chose, some readers would object, because these sentences highlight a contentious topic in English grammar: the difference between 鈥渇ormal鈥� and 鈥渘otional鈥� agreement. 聽
Nouns and verbs must 鈥渁gree鈥� in English. If the subject of a sentence or a clause is singular, its verb must be too (鈥渉e works鈥�); if the subject is plural, so is its verb (鈥渢hey work鈥�). Most of us do this intuitively, although speakers whose first language doesn鈥檛 have this sort of agreement (Chinese and Japanese, for example) might have to remind themselves of the rule in English.
Sometimes, though, it鈥檚 not so obvious. Let鈥檚 say the subject of your sentence is a听肠谤辞飞诲. That鈥檚 a singular noun, so agreement would seem to demand a singular verb: 鈥淎 crowd of people was at the party.鈥� It might seem more natural, though, to say 鈥淎 crowd of people were at the party.鈥� Neither of these sentences is wrong, per se; they simply abide by the rules of the two different types of agreement. The sort of noun-verb match we鈥檝e been talking about is formal agreement (鈥淎 crowd was鈥�). Notional agreement, in contrast, has the verb reflect how the speaker is thinking about the subject. Since a crowd contains many people, it is acceptable to use 鈥渨ere.鈥� In essence, the verb agrees with the meaning of the sentence.聽
Notional agreement 鈥� also called 鈥渘otional concord鈥� and 鈥渟ynesis鈥� 鈥� frequently comes into play when the subject is a collective noun like crowd, which is singular in form but refers to more than one person. If you are talking about a pair, trio, team, faculty, mob, multitude, group, and so on, your verb can be singular or plural, depending on what you want to emphasize about your subject. A singular verb suggests unity, thinking of the collection 鈥渁s a unit,鈥� as Garner鈥檚 Modern English Usage explains. For example: 鈥淭he pair of shoes is getting old.鈥� A plural verb, in contrast, stresses plurality, and the individuality of each member: 鈥淭he pair were happy on their honeymoon.鈥�
Returning to our first example, we can see that 鈥淎 pair of panels marks鈥� and 鈥淎 pair of panels mark鈥� are both correct, according to formal and notional agreement, respectively. 聽
In the end, the editors rewrote the caption and got rid of the potentially contentious issue. They went with the inarguable 鈥淎 panel marks,鈥� since the photo only showed one of the panels anyway. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
