In my experience, there are no rules that I'd trust. Preference and
choice comes back to corporate or house style (IBM is/was always
specified as singular), so I'd ask the client.
In absence of any other guidance my personal pick is singular for an
organisation or defined group that has an identifiable name, and
plural for a collection of people or organisations where there's no
commonly referenced entity.
However, at least one sports media outlet has a formal policy that
teams are plural. EG: "The Roosters are playing..." (which sounds
OK because of the "s") or "England have announced..." which sounds
positively weird but does follow the rule.
Unfortunately, the actual choice of singular or plural is often
capricious, so the best I've ever achieved is to accept the client's
choice and then strictly enforce it for consistency.
To answer your question: in NSW politics is "the Bear Pit" a place
(singular) or a collection of individuals representing multiple
parties (plural)? Bah.
John
At 08:35 22/04/2017, D wrote:
Is there a preference for describing organisations as a singular or plural? For instance, is it "the government were considering..." or "was"?
