Twenty tricky questions 
17.07.2009
Tricky plurals
Forming the plural is not the trickiest problem of the English language, that would probably be the tense system, but there are some difficult areas even here.
For example, take the noun staff. It can be used with both the singular verb form and the plural verb form. It just depends how you see the word. The British see staff as a collection of individual people and therefore normally use the plural verb:
"Our staff are on strike."
However, Americans see staff as a unit, so they use the singular verb:
"Our staff is on strike."
What about other subjects, such as none of, all, some and a/the number of? You might think you know the rules, but our exercise this month will really test your knowledge of this area.
Deborah Capras
COMMENTS
Thank you, good explantions.
Just one thing: Your comment #2 is "Some nouns only exist in the plural form, such as savings, police and trousers, and are thefore only used with plural verbs".
How about sentences like "Modern police in Europe has a precedent ..." etc? Isn't "police" a group noun like "government"?
Regards,
Nadiia
Thank you for your feedback. In British English, "police" is usually treated as a plural noun because we generally use it to refer to more than one police officer.
However, you are correct when you say that it is also used with a singular verb. In this case, it normally refers to the police force (the Metropolitan police has investigated...) — which means we are referring to one single unit, not more than one person. When we use it with this meaning, we use a singular verb.
We have changed our explanation to include this exception.
All the best,
Deborah Capras
Good exercise, but...
"The company HAVE no definite plans to invest in Poland next year." ???
No, no, never. Say that in public and you'll get some sideward glances. Now, if you WANT some sideward glances, that's a different story.
Keep us the good work. You're a great team!
Regards,
Nicholas