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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

Anybody else get confused by the title because of the British English practice of using the plural verb forms for (certain) collective nouns?

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As a native British English speaker the title feels wrong to me, despite common practices.

Manchester United Win Football Game = fine

TfL Kill Puppies = ok, I suppose

TfL Kill My Apps = No, they killed your app.

Yeah, I feel like it should've been past tense as well. "TfL Kill(s) My Apps" would be gramatically correct, but, like you said, it doesn't feel as right because it's not a continuous/repetitive action.

Why does it have to be killed when Man U doesn't have to be won?

Without putting my linguist hat on (in the middle of a hack day) my gut feeling is the 'newspaper'ness of the title. "Entity Verbs Noun" is fine if it's an impartial style report, but "Entity Verbs My Noun" is only good if it is a continuous verb.

"TFL Kill All Hopes Of Timely Service", for example, would be OK.

I don't understand what you mean, can you explain?

US: Netcraft confirms Microsoft is dying.

UK: Netcraft confirm Microsoft are dying.

Thanks - I never noticed that. I think I must have been unconsciously converting the US style to the UK style in my head all this time.

It's in the context of football that I really struggle to contain myself, and I'm not a grammar nazi any other time.

"Manchester United is going to win", or "Scotland has no chance", Argh!! I've no real reason to hate this, but it just feels wrong!

"Manchester United" is a contraction of "Manchester United Football Club"

Right, but en_UK dictates that this is plural, and hence you say "Manchester United are going to win."

And "Manchester United Football Club is going to win the Premiership" sounds to me as incorrect as "Manchester United is going to win the Premiership"

No matter what justification you use, "<football team> is..." will sound wrong to english speakers in the UK, Aus, NZ and a couple of other places (bar the person higher up in this thread who says they never notice it :))

In America, the convention is that organizations are singular in number. For example, "Bank of America offers loans." In England, the convention seems to be to treat organizations as plural.

I think that, actually, our (English) convention is (theoretically) to pick whichever seems more logical.

We would never say "Bank of America offer loans", however the poster used "TfL Kill Two of My Apps" because the act of killing was done be staff (plural) at TfL, rather than by the organisation itself.

That seems to be a distinction without a difference. Offering loans is done by the staff at Bank of America to the same degree that "the act of killing was done by staff (plural) at TfL, rather than by the organisation itself."

But when you read "Bank of America offers loans" you automatically assume that it's a company policy change, right? It's unlikely that the reason they are now offering loans is because the low-level staff who you ask for loans just happen to feel like it.

That said, yeah, there's a lot of wiggle room, and I've never known anyone argue about misuse either way... but in general, one way just sounds natural to our ears, and one sounds off, and which way sounds natural/off varies depending on scenario.

edit: I did actually have a slight "am I talking bullshit?" moment, rang up my mother who teaches English as a foreign language among other things, she backed up my interpretation so I'm more confident now.

I didn't say that Bank of America made a policy change; I sad that they offered a loan. The persons doing the offering of said loan are low-levels, presumably acting within the bounds set by company policy; however, the degree to which they adhere to the policy is not relevant. In terms of who is physically doing what, this really is a distinction without a difference, except that to your ears it sounds wrong (which is fine; that's the difference between dialects).

My point is simply that in American English, there are strict rules about number. I thought that English English had similarly strict rules about number that just happened to differ from those that Americans use; apparently not. Interesting.

"In British English, collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is, respectively, on the body as a whole or on the individual members; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree."

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_di....

There's also some more information about the differences between the two in these articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_collective_nouns#Metony... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesis

Fascinating; thank you for the links.

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