Challenging Nouns: Plurals That Seem Singular and Collective or Group Nouns
In formal scholarly writing, agreement should always be maintained between nouns and the verbs used with them. This is usually straightforward: singular nouns should be used with the singular forms of verbs, as in ‘the scholar investigates’ and ‘the child plays,’ while plural nouns must be used with the plural forms of verbs, as in ‘the scholars investigate’ and ‘the children play.’ However, there are certain nouns in the English language that present special challenges when it comes to agreement.
Plural nouns that seem to be singular nouns are a case in point. For example, ‘data,’ ‘media’ and ‘criteria’ are technically plural and should therefore be used with the plural forms of verbs, so ‘the criteria were’ and ‘the data show’ are correct. ‘Data’ is a little more complicated since it can also be used as a collective noun with the singular forms of verbs (‘the data shows’ or ‘the data reveals’). A slight difference in meaning might be indicated, with ‘data’ treated as a plural referring to individual facts, items and statistics, whereas ‘data’ as a singular refers to a body of facts. This distinction is rarely observed, however, and most authors tend to use the noun with exclusively singular or exclusively plural verbs. This is a sound policy, with the key point being to maintain consistency throughout a document.
With collective nouns in general, it is best if each noun is consistently treated as either a singular or a plural within a piece of writing. This can be rather tricky because such nouns are used as both singulars and plurals in casual conversation, so there is a tendency to be inconsistent. For instance, in ‘The society was founded in 1995; since then, they have grown rapidly,’ ‘they have’ in the second part of the sentence should actually be ‘it has’ to agree with the singular ‘society’ and the verb ‘was’ in the first part. Sometimes the decision to use a singular or plural verb with a collective noun can depend (as suggested with regard to ‘data’ above) on whether the noun refers to the group as a unit (singular) or to its members as individuals (plural). At other times the use of British or American English may make a difference. In American English, when the group is considered as a unit, a singular verb is usually used (‘Our team is playing very poorly this year’), but in British English, collective nouns tend to use plural verbs (‘Our team are playing very poorly this year’).
The collective nouns ‘couple’ and ‘pair’ are usually used as plurals when they refer to people, as in ‘The couple ride their bicycles to work,’ but collective nouns of quantity such as ‘number,’ ‘percentage’ and ‘proportion’ tend to take a singular verb when a definite article precedes the noun and a plural verb when an indefinite article precedes the noun. This means that ‘The proportion of customers with home phones is decreasing’ is correct, but so, too, is ‘A large proportion of customers are giving up their home phones in favour of mobile phones.’ The lesson here is to pay very close attention to each and every instance of such nouns in your writing.
Why Our Editing and Proofreading Services?
At Proof-Reading-Service.com we offer the highest quality journal article editing, phd thesis editing and proofreading services via our large and extremely dedicated team of academic and scientific professionals. All of our proofreaders are native speakers of English who have earned their own postgraduate degrees, and their areas of specialisation cover such a wide range of disciplines that we are able to help our international clientele with research editing to improve and perfect all kinds of academic manuscripts for successful publication. Many of the carefully trained members of our expert editing and proofreading team work predominantly on articles intended for publication in scholarly journals, applying painstaking journal editing standards to ensure that the references and formatting used in each paper are in conformity with the journal’s instructions for authors and to correct any grammar, spelling, punctuation or simple typing errors. In this way, we enable our clients to report their research in the clear and accurate ways required to impress acquisitions proofreaders and achieve publication.
Our scientific proofreading services for the authors of a wide variety of scientific journal papers are especially popular, but we also offer manuscript proofreading services and have the experience and expertise to proofread and edit manuscripts in all scholarly disciplines, as well as beyond them. We have team members who specialise in medical proofreading services, and some of our experts dedicate their time exclusively to PhD proofreading and master’s proofreading, offering research students the opportunity to improve their use of formatting and language through the most exacting PhD thesis editing and dissertation proofreading practices. Whether you are preparing a conference paper for presentation, polishing a progress report to share with colleagues, or facing the daunting task of editing and perfecting any kind of scholarly document for publication, a qualified member of our professional team can provide invaluable assistance and give you greater confidence in your written work.
If you are in the process of preparing an article for an academic or scientific journal, or planning one for the near future, you may well be interested in a new book, Guide to Journal Publication, which is available on our Tips and Advice on Publishing Research in Journals website.
