So like should I use “The audience is…” OR “The audience are…”?
Hi,
‘Audience’ is one of those collective nouns like ‘team’ and many others where you can either look upon the people within the group as one separate entity or a group of separate individuals.
In the first sense you could say: The audience was enthusiastic. In the second sense you could say: The audience were enthusiastic.
Alan
PS I should like to add that this is a question that has been asked many times on the forum and I think it really comes down to a matter of personal choice.
In American English it would always be “is”. British English varies from American as far as groups (such as corporations) being identified as plural or not.
For Example an American would probably say “Microsoft is announcing a new operating system” but an English person would probably say “Microsoft are announcing a new operating system”.
Not quite always.
In American usage, a collective noun takes a singular verb when it refers to the collection considered as a whole, as in The family was united on this question or The enemy is suing for peace. It takes a plural verb when it refers to the members of the group considered as individuals, as in My family are always fighting among themselves or The enemy were showing up in groups of three or four to turn in their weapons.
Police is always plural “The police are…”
Hi Milanya,
I agree with your general guidelines for collective nouns. However, this thread is about the word “audience”. Thus, I understood Erik’s comment to be focused on the use of the word “audience” in AmE, and not on the use of collective nouns in general – even though he did go on to mention another example.
I’d agree with the observation that the word “audience” is treated as grammatically singular in AmE.
Just as you found it appropriate to mention specifically that the word “police” is always plural, it is also appropriate to say that the word “audience” is always grammatically singular in American English. Basically, the only time you’ll find something such as “audience are” or “the audience were” in a sentence in American English is when the verb refers back to some other noun – a plural one. For example:
- The performance is so boring that many people in the audience are falling asleep.
In that example, the verb is plural because the word “people” is plural.
If I used only the word “audience”, the verb would then be singular (American usage):
- The performance is so boring that the audience is falling asleep.
This question about the word audience was discussed in another thread recently:
Audience vs. spectator
(Alan does not yet appear to be convinced that this particular difference exists.)
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