In the past week, two clients have written to ask whether they should refer to their company or division using the singular it or a plural pronoun. Below are their examples, slightly disguised. The underlining indicates the pronoun they doubted.
Company X wishes to express our sincere appreciation for Company Y’s continued support.
Human Resources is welcoming a new member to our department.
What do you think? Can Company X take the pronoun our? Or would its be correct? Can Human Resources call itself “our department” or is “its department” a better choice? How do you respond to questions like these?
The problem with both examples is not the plural pronoun. The use of plural pronouns to represent collective nouns—such as company, team, division, department, or unit—works fine to emphasize the individuals in the organization.
What’s wrong is the use of the singular verbs wishes and is. If you want to use plural pronouns such as we, our, and ours, you need to use plural verbs.
These examples are consistent, with all the plural parts underlined:
We at Company X wish to express our sincere appreciation for Company Y’s continued support.
We in Human Resources are welcoming a new member to our department.
No doubt both clients used a singular verb because it sounds—and is—correct. “Company X wishes” and “Human Resources is welcoming” both sound natural.
But if the sentence parts are to hang together consistently, the word choices must all be plural or all be singular. The We solutions above use plurals: They add “we” at the beginning of the sentence and use a plural verb and pronoun.
Yet making the forms singular leads to more concise writing:
Company X wishes to express sincere appreciation for Company Y’s continued support.
Human Resources is welcoming a new member to the department.
What do the style manuals recommend? They generally agree that collective nouns can be singular or plural and that consistency is essential.
The Gregg Reference Manual offers this advice:
Organizational names may be treated as either singular or plural. Ordinarily, treat the name as singular unless you wish to emphasize the individuals who make up the organization; in that case, use the plural. . . . Use the singular or plural form consistently within the same context.
Gregg provides these correct examples:
Brooks & Rice has lost its lease. It is now looking for a new location.
Brooks & Rice have lost their lease. They are now looking for a new location.
The Chicago Manual of Style does not deal specifically with organizational names and the use of pronouns, but it offers this guidance on collective nouns:
A collective noun takes a singular pronoun if the members are treated as a unit {the audience showed its appreciation} but as a plural if they act individually {the audience rushed back to their seats}.
Chicago‘s examples would be more helpful with present tense verbs:
The audience shows its appreciation. (singular)
The audience rush back to their seats. (plural)
Garner’s Modern American Usage offers a lot of guidance on collective nouns, subjective-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, and related topics, but it does not mention organizational units such as company, division, etc. (at least not that I can find). Garner does say that “Apart from the desire for consistency, there is little ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ on this subject: collective nouns sometimes take a singular verb and sometimes a plural one.”
The Associated Press Stylebook touches on the topic, saying, “Nouns that denote a unit take singular verbs and pronouns.” It points out that team names typically take plural verbs; for example, “The Yankees are in first place” and “The Miami Heat are battling for third place.”
So should a company be it or we? It’s your choice. Just be consistent about using the singular pronoun it with singular verbs—and the plural we with plural verbs.
How do you handle references to your company or team?
Lynn
