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Comment by gbalduzzi | Hacker News Reader

I know this is not the right place for this but english is not my first language.

How is "have" the correct verb here? Shouldn't it be "has"? Like, the crew is the subject, and it has 35 seconds.

I'm trying to understand what I'm missing here, because I'm sure BBC did not make a mistake

If a noun denotes a group of people – even if it's technically a singular noun – it's okay (but not compulsory) to use a plural verb.

The sentences 'Real Madrid have performed well this year' and 'Real Madrid has performed well this year' are both grammatically acceptable, and probably used roughly the same amount.

A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb (e.g. 'None of the players is good enough') but you'll now see it a lot with a plural verb (e.g. 'None of the players are good enough').

"none" is saying something about all of the players, so how would that be singular? The word "none" is always used in a plural context, like if there is only one player then you won't say "none of the player"

I'm talking about the verb that follows 'none', not the noun.

'None of the team was [singular] prepared' and 'None of the team were [plural] prepared' are both correct.

You said

> A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb

And I'm questioning why you think "none" should technically govern a singular verb when "none" is normally a non-singular subject.

I'm sure both are being used, and at the end of the day what is correct is determined by how a significant amount of people are using the language. But I just don't understand why you think a singular verb would be more "technically correct"

Did you mean that because you could replace none with "not one" then it should be singular? But that only works because the 'not' applies to the whole sentence, so the remainder is about 'one', i.e. "not (one of the team was prepared)". But that doesn't work for the word none because you can't read it as the 'not' applying to a singular part-sentence.

There are dialectal differences here. “Real Madrid have” is common in British English but would be very rare, possibly to the extent of striking native speakers as an ungrammatical mistake, in American.

Both "has" and "have" sound ok to me here as a native speaker.

Both of these can describe the same event:

- The cows have 10 seconds to enter the field

- The herd has 10 seconds to enter the field

In the case of "crew", the word can either mean

- The people who are part of the crew (like "the cows")

- The crew as a collective unit (like "the herd")

Which is why both sound ok

You would have to say 'which has', but then yes it works (and is more correct than 'who have').

Ok:

"The crew who have..."

"The crew that have..."

"The crew which have..."

"The crew that has..."

"The crew which has..."

Not ok:

"The crew who has..."

The reason that last one isn't ok is that "who" refers to a person or people, not an object. "Crew" can either refer to a singular object or a plural group of people. Put together, "crew who" must refer to a plural group of people, so needs a verb that matches plural.

This might help: https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/ask-writer/are-words-...

In short:

When you’re referring to the collective noun as a unit, treat it as singular:

The band lost its spot in the top ten this week. When you’re referring to the individuals within the group, treat it as plural:

The jury had to sign for their ID badges.

In Italian we don't have this distinction, when we use a collective noun we always treat it as singular (unless there are multiple collection, like multiple crews). Thank you for the explanation

Doesn't your advice contradict the BBC's phrasing? Collectively, the band lost its spot in the top ten. And, collectively, the crew has 35 seconds to prepare the stage for the next performer.

I think this is to some extent a British English vs US English thing; it's certainly more common to treat words like crew/company/etc as plural in British English. The linked article is being overly prescriptive, though. Both are basically fine.

I once read a Wikiepedia article starting with "Pink Floyd are..." and immediately hit edit. I saw a banner comment saying its correct according to British English. Since then I've noticed lots of "Company are...". I also wonder why India uses "Company is...". My guess is Britain adopted it after Indian independence.

It's often proscribed, many style guides say 'the company is/has', sort of de-personifying it to the entity rather than the people that work there.

I think it's an Americanizm to say e.g. 'Apple have released a new iPhone'.

No, it’s actually more common to do this in British English than in American English, so it’s a “Britism” if anything.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Brit...

Was it commonly used in (for example) 1900? It wasnt taught to Indian students like me, who had English books with Cambridge and Oxford logos.

It wouldn't be taught here either, it's a colloquialism/corruption, whether from American influence or not. Long may you keep it (and so many other things) out of Indian English!

it depends on what flavour of English you speak. British English for instance tends to use plural for collective nouns.

This is a place where uou can use either. There is IIRC a letter of JRR tolkien where he discusses this very issue. "The crew" can be thouth of as "a set of people" (so you can say The crew has) or "severa people" (so you can say "the crew have").

Sometimes the BBC does make mistakes but this seems to fit their style guide:

"Treat collective nouns - companies, governments and other bodies - as singular. There are some exceptions: ... Sports teams - although they are singular in their role as business concerns (eg: Arsenal has declared an increase in profits) Rock/pop groups"

So treating a crew, like a team, as plural makes sense.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/grammar-spelling-punctu...

Both approaches are regularly used, so it is now more of a style choice, hence being in the style guide.

The Economist style guide says Brits are more likely to use plural and Americans singular but writers need to make a judgement in context: https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/09/20/style-guide-ent...

Using plural for companies, orgs or teams is common in British English.

For example "Apple have released a new iPhone".

as a plural noun, it refers to the individuals part of the crew. similar to people, flock

'Crew' implies that it is a group of people doing this and therefore they have 35 seconds. You can reconstitute the sentence to check what you should use. In this case you could say in your head:" the crew as a team check the video feed. They have 35 seconds to do this." If this was referring to an individual it would be: "Peter checks the video feed, he has 35 seconds to do this."

Even native English speakers disagree on this.

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