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Here, the people comprising the crowd are dispersing in different directions, right? So, the word 'crowd' is no longer a singular unit.

Kindly, someone confirm the answer.

Ananya Priyadarshini
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    One way I like to think about question like these is: Did the police disperse the crowd, or disperse the people in the crowd? They dispersed the crowd, not the people, so the verb should be singular. And Google Ngrams agrees. But I don't think any British people would even notice (let alone think you were committing a great offense against the English language) if you said "were dispersed" and not "was dispersed." – Peter Shor Nov 25 '23 at 14:25
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    @PeterShor: True, dat. For most of us Brits, the "crowd" is likely to be *singular* if we're seeing it from the police's perspective (it's a "blob" of potential trouble that they need to deal with), but *plural* if we sympathize more with the protesters, and see the crowd as a large number of people making their point (where in our imagination, we could have perhaps been one of the crowd ourselves). – FumbleFingers Nov 25 '23 at 17:51
  • ... Yes, 'were' makes it more personal, less clinical. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 25 '23 at 19:00

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