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Wingfat Posted 18 years ago
Grammar

Was or Were?

Help please! Which is correct?

1) A group of boys was dancing.

2) A group of boys were dancing.
  

Top answer

Personally, I would use 'was', but I seem to remember once reading that British English favoured one and American the other, particularly in situations like 'my family is crazy' or 'my family are crazy'. Unfortunately, I can't remember which one is British and which is American. Here in Australia, we tend to follow British more than American English, suggesting that treating groups as singular nouns is British.

— Richard_s

  • Personally, I would use 'was', but I seem to remember once reading that British English favoured one and American the other, particularly in situations like 'my family is crazy' or 'my family are crazy'.
  • Unfortunately, I can't remember which one is British and which is American.
  • Here in Australia, we tend to follow British more than American English, suggesting that treating groups as singular nouns is British.
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13 Answers
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Personally, I would use 'was', but I seem to remember once reading that British English favoured one and American the other, particularly in situations like 'my family is crazy' or 'my family are crazy'.  Unfortunately, I can't remember which one is British and which is American.  Here in Australia, we tend to follow British more than American English, suggesting that treating groups as singular
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I guess I should have said I'm American. In the USA we'd say "my family is crazy."

In my example I'm not sure what the subject is, "group" or "boys." I think these are correct:

1) A group was dancing.

2) Boys were dancing.

But "a group of boys"?

To me "A group of boys were dancing" feels less awkward, but I that doesn't make it correct.
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'A group' is the subject.  Prepositional phrases can't be subjects.  I guess that means 'a group of boys was dancing' is correct. 
Interesting that we follow the American rule in Australia on that one.  We do sometimes choose the American over the British.
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As told by Richard, prepositional phrases cannot be subjects and so the subject of the sentence is 'Group'.

'Group' is a collective Noun. and Collective Nouns take 'singular verb'.

So 'was' is correct !
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richard_s I guess that means 'a group of boys was dancing' is correct.
Would you say "a number of people is..." or "a number of people are..."?
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'a number of people' is considered plural. so we say 'a number of people are....'
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innamuris'a number of people' is considered plural.
By whom? A number is grammatically singular. My point was common sense should prevail over grammatical "rules". Rather than try to ascertain if something is singular or plural grammatically we should do it by feel on a case by case basis.
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wingfatI guess I should have said I'm American. In the USA we'd say "my family is crazy."
If you are American you don't need any rules. You already know what sounds ok, and that's what counts. If somebody told you "It is I" is correct, would you start to say it instead of "It's me", even if it sounds totally weird? No.

When you have something like "a g
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According to Swan (Practical English Usage (p519) - a fairly accurate source), in British English collective nouns can be either singular or plural.  'Plural forms are common when the group is seen as a collection of people.'  This fits with the usage that I hear in Australia.  It seems that in American English, collective nouns are usually considered singular.
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