Is delegation singular or plural? “Was” vs “were” is killing my brain on this one. My mind wants to say “your delegation was”, but it’s a word I never use, so I could be wrong…
This is, afaik, a British vs American thing. In British English (I think, I live here and confuse this all the time due to the mixing of accents everywhere) group/collective nouns are treated as plural.
Examples:
The press were on the scene.
Ferrari were (in case of the F1 team) hopeful before the start of the season.
The herd of bison were running.
Data is the really annoying one. “The data shows” vs “the data show” is a pain.
Data is the annoying one because it’s consistently used wrong (to a degree that I wonder if the “wrong” usage is now acceptable due to a critical mass of wrong). The word data is plural, datum is the singular.
Is delegation singular or plural? “Was” vs “were” is killing my brain on this one. My mind wants to say “your delegation was”, but it’s a word I never use, so I could be wrong…
This is, afaik, a British vs American thing. In British English (I think, I live here and confuse this all the time due to the mixing of accents everywhere) group/collective nouns are treated as plural.
Examples: The press were on the scene. Ferrari were (in case of the F1 team) hopeful before the start of the season. The herd of bison were running.
Data is the really annoying one. “The data shows” vs “the data show” is a pain.
Data is the annoying one because it’s consistently used wrong (to a degree that I wonder if the “wrong” usage is now acceptable due to a critical mass of wrong). The word data is plural, datum is the singular.
I’m no englishtologist, but I’m pretty sure it’s singular. I’ve heard “the delegations from so and so” before on the news/media.