A group of women seek an appointment. or A group of women seeks an appointment. Which is correct?
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2Is it the group seeking an appointment (i.e. seeking an appointment together) or is it each individual in the group seeking a separate appointment? – Shoe May 19 '19 at 06:58
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Possible duplicate of Are collective nouns always plural, or are certain ones singular? – Edwin Ashworth May 19 '19 at 18:25
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ETA: Appointment is singular, so we're going to assume that the group is seeking an appointment together, versus individually seeking separate appointments. In this case, a singular verb is best.
A group of women seeks an appointment is correct.
Annie
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Thank you, @Chappo, I have edited the answer. I assume the system will unflag it? – Annie May 19 '19 at 14:14
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An edit does reset some review queues, but I'm not sure about the Low Quality Queue, since most posts in the LQQ are flagged by a system algorithm that looks not only at length but also content (e.g. whether there's a link to supporting evidence). I think you've still missed the key point, that the subject ("a group") is singular: the number of appointments the group is seeking is a red herring. Nonetheless, I've reversed my downvote in recognition of your effort to improve your answer. :-) – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten May 19 '19 at 14:50
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Welcome to ELU, Annie. As a Brit, I'd use notional agreement. Certainly 'Local Women's Group seeks new place to meet'. But 'a group of women' sounds far less unitary, and I'd go with 'a group of women / a dozen women seek an appointment' (they all want an appointment, but they want to attend the same one), where 'a group of' corresponds to a quantifier rather than a traditional collective noun. Cf 'the staff are seeking an appointment'. – Edwin Ashworth May 19 '19 at 18:32