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The class is/are all working on a project together.

I am curious to know whether I can use both is and are in this sentence - with a small difference in meaning.

TH92
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    In BrE we routinely treat collective nouns like class, family company, workforce as singular or plural according to the context and intended nuance. So to me, the presence of the word *all* inherently forces the plural interpretation requiring *are. Because AmE takes a stricter line (such words are almost always* treated as syntactically singular), I suppose at least some Americans will be happy with My family is* all here*, but it sure sounds daft to me. – FumbleFingers Jan 15 '16 at 17:25
  • @BenjaminHarman Thanks. I wasn´t sure whether I can use both "is" and "are" as there is the word "together". So even in my example both are possible. – TH92 Jan 15 '16 at 17:30
  • @FumbleFingers I agree with you entirely about the UK. I took a very small straw poll (6 individuals) just now and 100% went for the plural "are". – BillJ Jan 15 '16 at 19:02
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    @BillJ: I'm itching to downvote Benjamin's answer, because it seems almost unbelievable that any significant number of speakers (even Americans) would ignore the screamingly obvious semantic plurality of *all. But it would only confuse the issue if we start voting along "national dialectal preference" lines for questions like this (besides which, we Brits would always* be outvoted on every usage split). So I'll just have to abstain and watch to see how others (Americans) vote. I'm heartened by Peter's NGrams though. – FumbleFingers Jan 15 '16 at 19:15
  • @FumbleFingers : "Even Americans," just as if nothing worse could be said of a person. Lol. – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 23:51
  • @Benjamin: I say even Americans because it's my perception that on average Americans observe the grammatical rules they were taught at school more strictly than Brits. In fact, so far as I know relatively few British schools actually spend much time teaching grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, etc. (and things like "spelling bees" are something of an alien concept to most of us). To my mind the net position is that post-Webster, AmE has become relatively "conservative" compared to BrE. – FumbleFingers Jan 16 '16 at 13:27
  • @FumbleFingers - Yes, America does pride itself on giving all American children a solid educational foundation in what we call the Three Rs: Reading, Riting, and Rythmatic. America also apparently prides itself on being ironic. – Benjamin Harman Jan 16 '16 at 17:26

1 Answers1

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In the US, one wouldn't say, "The class are all working on a project together." One would say, "The class is all working on a project together."

However, in the UK, it's said both ways:

5. Group nouns

Some nouns, like army, refer to groups of people, animals or things, and we can use them either as singular nouns or as plural nouns.

Examples: army, audience, committee, company, crew, enemy, family, flock, gang, government, group, herd, media, public, regiment, staff, team.

We can use these group nouns either as singular nouns or as plural nouns:

  • My family is very dear to me.

  • I have a large family. They are very dear to me. (= The members of my family…)

  • The government is very unpopular.

  • The government are always changing their minds.

Sometimes we think of the group as a single thing:

  • The audience always enjoys the show.
  • The group consists of two men and three women.

Sometimes we think of the group as several individuals:

  • The audience clapped their hands.
  • The largest group are the boys.

The names of many organisations and teams are also group nouns, but they are usually plural in spoken English:

  • Barcelona are winning 2-0.
  • The United Oil Company are putting prices up by 12%.

In regard to UK usage, I've heard the assertion that one would count class as singular, thus use "is," if the class is working in concert (together), but one would count the class as plural, thus use "are," if the class is all working but working severally. This assertion, however, doesn't seem to hold up where the rubber meets the road. You quite commonly hear people say things like, "the government are saying," and, "the military are invading," using a plural conjugation in situations where a unified front is clearly intended.

Benjamin Harman
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    In the U.S., one can say "The class are all* working on a project together."* The *all* makes the plural verb acceptable (and in fact slightly preferred). See Ngram with the all. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '16 at 17:47
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    And another Ngram without the all. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '16 at 17:49
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    Really? It sounds infinitely strange to me. Let's try another example: "My family is all headed home"; or, "My family are all headed hope." Nope. I just don't hear it with "are." Google has the "Ngram" tool that allows us to track certain word combinations, but it wouldn't track by location. If it's your experience, I don't refute it. It's just not my experience, which experience is relatively broad. – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 17:49
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    That Ngram is just for American English. It may vary regionally, but for me, as soon as you put in the all, it feels to me like you need a plural verb. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '16 at 17:50
  • Oh, I see. It does separate out by American English. I wonder how it can filter the nationality of the author of words. – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 17:53
  • I expect it filters by the location of the publisher. So it's not perfect, but if you put words like color and colour in, you can see that most of the sources it identifies as American really do have American spelling. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '16 at 17:55
  • @Peter Shor : Because it sounds so strange to me, I went ahead and clicked on the links to get the various lists, to get what the statistics are based on. The search doesn't filter for prepositional phrases. Many of the instances in American English are, "members of the family are." In such situations, the subject is based on the plural subject "members" rather than the count of "family." I haven't yet found an instance that says "family are" with "family" as the subject of the sentence, but I'm only on page six. – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 17:57
  • The links are not sorted by American/British, and you're right ... that's the wrong Ngram. I'll try to find a better one. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '16 at 17:59
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    Here and here. The capital "My" means it's the beginning of a sentence. – Peter Shor Jan 15 '16 at 18:01
  • The only examples I found in the first 10 pages were the books *The Scottish Blue Family..." Nope, only one. The other one says, "I wife's duties towards her husband's family are. (By the way, I did go the chat room as you had asked.) – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 18:07
  • So, based on these Ngrams, it's clear that "family is" is much, much more prevalent, that the noun "family" is being counted as singular. Whereas there are some examples, and I haven't reviewed them yet, where "family are" is used, how minimal does usage have to be to be negligible? Are we sure that the infinitesimal amount reflected in the numbers is statistically significant? Is it enough to include it in standard use? – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 18:10
  • The instances of "my family are all well" have the same problem as before. They are all references like, "My wife and my family are all well." They mostly do not have "family" as the sole subject of the sentence. All others are books originally published long ago. They've been republished within the recent time frame, but their original publication was the 1800s or before, e.g., Corb's Ordeal: The Diaries of a Virginia Farmer, 1842-1872 (republished in 1997); Carolina Planters on the Alabama Frontier, (an anthology of writings from frontier times). I haven't seen evidence of modern usage. – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 18:21
  • (cont.) Page 41 of a report by the Maryland State Colonization Society; Memoirs of the Administration of ... Henry Pelham (The Lord Chancelor to the Duke of New Castle); Congressional Edition - Volume 2752 - Page 104 (Published in 1890). I have yet to find a single modern usage on the American side. – Benjamin Harman Jan 15 '16 at 18:27
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    @TH92 In the UK, the plural override is particularly likely with predicates that necessarily apply to individuals rather than collective wholes, and it is virtually required if a quantifying adjunct such as all is included in the clause. So we would mostly hear The class are all working on a project together . – BillJ Jan 15 '16 at 18:55