Part or percentage of a group - singular or plural?

Question

Hi,I keep struggling with sentences/clauses like these:"part of the group is" vs. "part of the group are""20 percent of the people is" vs. "20 percent of the people are"Please tell me which the correct ones are and explain me why. I would need a grammar rule that I can follow when encounter similar structures.Thank you,Attila

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

See the answer by CalifJim in this thread:
It is very clear!

Avangi · Answer

The group, the population, the chorus, the class, the team - all of these can go either way, depending on how you think of them.

Half the team is black and half the team is white.

Half the team are men and half the team are women.

Half the team is male and half the team is female. (referring to the team)

Half the team are male and half the team are female. (referring to the members)

"People" is a little tougher. I don't think you could use singular. Half the people smoke and half the people don't. Not Half the people smokes and half the people doesn't.

I suspect the reason we must use plural verbs with "people" and "men" and "women" is because they are plural nouns, while the other designations are adjectives.

Half the herd is/are Jersey and half is/are Gurnsey. (adjectives)

Half the herd are Jerseys and half are Gurnseys. (nouns) Singular verbs would be very low register, or incorrect.

Note that we changed the adjectives for the cattle breeds to nouns by adding "s."

The same would work with the adjectives "male" and "female." Half the team are males and half are females.

Of course you could not say, "Half the team is man and half the team is woman." Nor should you say, "Half the team is men and half the team is women."

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you for both answers!

Part or percentage of a group - singular or plural?

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