Is staff plural or singular now?

[rich]

This is from an online publication I truly respect:
"Spokeswoman Susan Gard with the California Division of Workers' Compensation said that the WCAB district offices look for prior claims -- absent a Social Security number -- by searching the given birth date and birthplace. The staff cross-check and look for matches in case someone is hiding their identity or past injuries."

It is bad enough that a curmudgeon such as I must accept a plural of the pronoun as a substitute for the singular. Must we now say, "The family are well"? (And punctuate this question that way, too?)

But, OK! If we are going to take this path, why don't we just adopt the British English rules across the board? The queen's English really is a beautiful language you know? And if we conform to it, those signs with "theatre" and "harbour" ornamenting them would not look so pretentious.

But, Ohhh, the game it offers us. The game.

[dfisher]

I'm interested in board members' take on this from a setup story about the Jena protest:

Hotels are booked for miles around Jena, the Louisiana State Police are drawing officers from across the state to help control the crowds, and schools and many businesses in this town of 3,000 will close Thursday in anticipation of 10,000 or more demonstrators who are expected.

Forgetting for a moment the probable surplus of "who are expected," I'm wondering about the use of "are" with Louisiana State Police. I can argue it either way:
We say, for instance, Columbia police are looking ...
But we also say the Columbia Police Department is sponsoring its ...

How many would treat the Louisiana State Police as a plural similar to the more general term "Columbia police," and how many would say it's a singular given that it's an agency?

Doug

[Peter Fisk]

Police are, not police is.

I offer no reason other than "that's just how it is." ... If I saw the Louisiana State Police is drawing officers from across the state in a news story, I'd look back to the byline to see if the story was written by Jethro Bodine.

[Gerri Berendzen]

Several years ago, we had a rather protracted discussion about this on my desk.

Our take is police, lower case, is an "are." But Police, upper case, is really the entity — the Police Department — and so it takes "is."

Our police reporter strongly disagrees. “Police is” doesn’t sound that great. But everyone on the desk agrees with the reasoning behind it. And we also agree to stay away from that construction.

It's a case where I'd put the extra word (Department) in. Where the issue comes up the most is in headlines, where Department often doesn't fit.

[rich]

The staff cross-check and look for matches in case someone is hiding their identity or past injuries.

and

the Louisiana State Police are drawing officers from across the state to help control. ...

"Police Department" is singular, I agree.

But the "police" in "police say there were horses on the freeway" is plural.

I understand the Doug Fisher reservations, and I accept the notion that defenses can be mounted for both cited usages.

As Doug suggests, if the "police take" a position, that ought to be treated differently from the way a police agency is treated when it takes a position. Both Gerri Berendzen and Peter Fisk appear to agree with Doug. In the final analysis, I guess it depends on whether readers recognize the capitalization as establishing that "Louisiana State Police" is an agency of law enforcement officers.

But do we agree at the very least that it is irregular in American English to treat "staff" as a plural? We give in on so many other points, I wonder.

I would never change a Churchill quote, when he says “the army are effective in the Far East,” but if I were to paraphrase it for an American audience, I would not write it that way. Would you?

[LisaMc]

I would never change a Churchill quote, when he says “the army are effective in the Far East,” but if I were to paraphrase it for an American audience, I would not write it that way. Would you?

I would not either, in a paraphrase. But British English uses a lot more singular words as plural ("Manchester are leading with a minute to go"), so I 'm sure the quote sounds fine to them. Personally, I think "staff are" sounds odd for the same reason (and sort of biz-jargony as well), and I'll usually change it to "staffers are" or "staff members are." I tell my students that you never want your readers to stop and go "Huh?" when reading, on the chance that they will abandon the story. "Staff are" makes me stop and go "Huh?"

[Deadline Dame]

I think "police is" in any context is a mess. I also think we should go with what sounds right to the ear and not analyize it to death, which sometimes happens.

On a similar note, I've noticed the deletion of the word "the" in reference to a body. "City council is meeting today to......"

This sounds odd to me, and while not wrong, I still come down on the side of what "sounds" best.

[LisaMc]

Apologies for the multiple posts earlier.

I've seen stories with "the" left out and I agree that it sounds odd. And government-jargony. And Peter Sellers-making-fun-of-Charlie-Chan-ish.

[Gerri Berendzen]

You found my biggest pet peeve: "City Council is considering passing an ordinance ..."

A few years ago I asked a new staff member why she left off the article, and she said she was taught in high school grammar that it isn't needed. I'm with you Deadline Dame, I think it sounds wrong. And I think the article is needed. (It's not any old city council, it's the only city council for this city.)

But on police, I see what Doug is getting at. My paper is on the border and covers both Illinois and Missouri. In Missouri, it's easy. The state police are called the Missouri State Highway Patrol. But in Illinois, the entity is the Illinois State Police. So do you say "The Illinois State Police is planning to step up alcohol patrols." Or, "The Illinois State Police are planning to step up alcohol patrols."

I say the first, because Illinois State Police is one entity. You could substitute the word "agency," so it needs the singular verb.

[Gerri Berendzen]

And yet ... I see that I wrote "The state police are called the Missouri State Highway Patrol," and didn't think anything of it.

So I guess I'm getting muddled on this one.

Still, I'd think "the Illinois State Police is planning to step up alcohol patrols" is correct. And I also think I usually try to write around that when I see it in copy. (Like "Illinois State Police troopers will be stepping up alcohol patrols.")

[rich]

Lisa McLendon, your argument is cogent. And, muddled or not, Gerri Berendzen. you make sense. Of course, you always do.

I see no reason for dropping the article before "city council," a practice that I do not remember encountering 20 or 30 years ago. I wonder whether there is some confusion about how to tighten a sentence.

Of course, it could be that writers who become troubled by the singular nature of the indefinite article, feel that in all fairness they should not eject it from the language unless they also exclude the definite article.

I mean, for some of us, it still is troubling to use a singular "a" before "couple," if we are going to treat "couple" as a plural.

But I know that in believing that the syntax of American English should be logical I am being foolish, so just laugh and let it pass.

[Deadline Dame]

Saying "the Illinois State Police is planning to step up alcohol patrols" is fine, as in the exaple you gave, as a body, proper noun, but I think it's different than when the word stands alone. On second reference wouldn't you just say "police" and then use "police are working to.....?"

[Peter Fisk]

These all seem equally wrong to me:

The New York Yankees is going to make the playoffs.

The Rolling Stones is on tour.

The Illinois State Police is planning to step up alcohol patrols.

To answer Richard's original question, the use of staff with a plural verb doesn't sound wrong to me, but maybe that's because I've been listening to BBC World Service a lot lately.

(I've noted in the past that, for my ear, the English I hear on BBC World Service bears a greater resemblance to natural Standard American English than does the over-processed, mechanized language that regularly emerges from American newspaper copy desks.)

[dfisher]

And then we get this on an AP story today:

In the end, the first nationwide strike against General Motors in 37 years came because the United Auto Workers want something that GM will find difficult to promise: job security.

I'll accept that, if you are willing to say the UAW are.

As for the police example, I generally agree with Peter -- the ear here probably rules. I just wanted to get some feedback. Thanks so much. It illustrates the transition we are going through as people "learn" their English by speaking it, not by writing/reading it. I think that is actually the most important thing we can realize, much as cockney has affected the King's English over the years.

Doug

[Gerri Berendzen]

A lot of the constructions that are technically correct, sound wrong.

I've spent a lot of years writing around using Jaycees as a noun by itself because "The Jaycees is ..." sounds sooo bad.

I think there will always be some kind of argument between "sounds right" and "follows the grammar books." I'm always telling the students in my communications classes to write conversationally. I suspect in conversation, "the United Auto Workers want" would be the way most people would go.

For the record, "The New York Yankees is going to make the playoffs" sounds awful. But "The Rolling Stones is on tour" doesn't sound as bad to me. Perhaps that's because I think band when I hear Rolling Stones.

So I guess there's also a lot of argument about what "sounds" wrong.

[rich]

I guess the ear is an instrument that needs tuning occasionally. What sounds good at one time may not at another.

Long, long ago, before many on this board were born, I learned how difficult it is to trust the ear in one case, or in another to conform to what I wanted to believe were fixed rules.

I put myself in a position in which I had professional responsibilities to both American English and to British English.

It was a struggle that I did not handle well.

But I have been through a multitude of tune-ups since then, and now wonder whether it was worth the effort.

What I hear these days affirms my belief that people who have expertise in any version of the English language tend to be great defensive strategists. It is the language that arms us and makes us so aggressive.

It is the language, we all know, that created all the heroes of our past, even from Anglo-Saxon antiquity (and perhaps earlier) and will continue to create new ones until kingdom come, whatever that means. Chaucer's double and triple negatives are every bit so admirable as are any other conventions, people insist, and I believe it. I truly do.

English speakers -- whether in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or America -- always seem to know what is correct, and as those who seem to know something probably do, everything else is and must be idiomatic. For us Americans, the real and pure language is where AP, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Manual of Style and all the others agree.

People in Dublin or London or Melbourne do use vernacular expressions and peculiar pronunciations that can be quite charming, though.

But let us rejoice, even if some writers say: The staff are doing what the staff do.

English, Heaven and Hollywood all belong to us.

[Peter Fisk]

A sentence from the NYT today:

The national police has been widely criticized for cruelty to Sunnis.

OK, is this actually a genuine established standard usage among some segments of American English speakers? Or is it just another exasperating manifestation of The Little-Known Baloney Rules Of Proper Tin-Eared English That The Copy Desk Enforces For No Good Reason?

When I come across this sort of thing in an otherwise mellifluous news story, it's like stepping on a broken bottle at the beach. But I suppose it's possible that "police has" really is standard in some parts, and those folks would find "have" jarring in that sentence. But if you treat "police" as singular, don't you have to stress the first syllable and give it a long "o"? As in Uh-oh, somebody better warn them Duke boys the PO-leece is comin'.

Well, on the brighter side, at least the NYT sentence wasn't "fixed" thusly:

The national police widely has been criticized for cruelty to Sunnis.

[Neil Holdway]

As for such things as the New York Yankees are and the United Auto Workers are and the UAW is, some style or certainly grammar book must address this. I would use United Auto Workers are and UAW is and not think anything of it.

With "staff," it absolutely should be "the staff" and "the city council"! That's just driving me nuts lately -- reporters bringing the jargon into their stories: "The school board asked staff to look into it." Nobody but government or Dilbert-style management talks like that.

[Neil Holdway]

Similar to the "staff" misuse, just now I had the sentence, "Family and a priest told her that keeping the broken idol inside the home would bring bad luck." I added "The" at the beginning, or you could add "members" afterward.

Meanwhile, back on the UAW issue, I had a story about a bereavement program called "Herbie's Friends." I found that I would say "Herbie's Friends is a program ..." Is the lack of "The" before it the difference? Because you would have "The Friends of Cityville Library support ..." Or if Herbie's Friends was actually a group of people, would one then say "Herbie's Friends are supporters of a little boy named Herbie ...."?

My favorite grammar book, The Gregg Reference Manual, similarly leaves it to how you would talk about the group, in the "Subjects and Verbs" section:

Organizational names

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.

... Note: If the organization is referred to as they or who, use a plural verb with the company name. If the organization is referred to as it or which, use a singular verb.

So there you go. No help. We're back to what sounds good.

[Neil Holdway]

Aaaaarrrghhhhhh!

Village staff plan to review the information and recommend a course of action to the health & human services committee within the next few months.

[Jim Thomsen]

When I come across this — and I do rather routinely — I either change "staff" to "staffers" or rewrite the sentence entirely to eliminate the problem. Numerous "style notes" on this matter sent out via newsroom e-mail have had little effect.

[dfisher]

Friends of the Library is a group of people acting as a unit. The Friends of the Library is holding a bake sale. Not are.

This i not an "ear" issue. It is a longstanding grammar issue.

A group of parents have come together to plan a ski trip (they came together individually). The group of parents has decided to go to Vail. (Now acting as one unit.)

Yes, I agree with synesis (the classic example -- My family is coming for Thanksgiving. I'm gong to make them a turkey.) but I fear we are using that to create more the rule than the exception.

Call me pedantic. So be it.

(But lto each his own. I don't find City Council jarring without "the/" Like you, I find staff without the artice to be more jarring. C'est la guerre, eh)

[Peter Fisk]

Friends of the Library is a group of people acting as a unit. The Friends of the Library is holding a bake sale. Not are.

This i not an "ear" issue. It is a longstanding grammar issue.

But Doug, you wouldn't say "The New England Patriots is likely to win tonight's game," would you? That's a group of people acting as a unit. Seems to me you're invoking a universal rule that doesn't really exist.

As a matter of fact, I personally would say "The Friends of the Library are holding a bake sale," not "is." To me it sounds more correct that way. But as is often the case in usage choices, there's not necessarily an absolute right or wrong way. They can both be right. Language is not a zero sum game.

[rich]

I'm inclined to side with Doug on this, although I realize the challenges purists face on it may be akin to the problems we had a generation and more ago trying to defend the rule that the verb "to be" does not take an object. Alas, I now live apart from many current terrors. Here, as you probably have heard, we old fools continue forgotten struggles in mostly dilapidated and useless trenches that protect little or nothing. What we think precious in language goes the way of all that is degradable.

But let that be.

Yesterday's wounds have stopped bleeding, and tomorrow someone will tell a joke funny enough to make us laugh, perhaps even impolitely.

I'm all for tomorrow.

Have a happy new year.

[dfisher]

But Doug, you wouldn't say "The New England Patriots is likely to win tonight's game," would you? That's a group of people acting as a unit. Seems to me you're invoking a universal rule that doesn't really exist.

That's idiomatic, and it had to be finally settled with a stylebook entry because of the problems with singular and plural team names -- as well as band names. I would say that while I know it's a cop-out, the sense seems to be of individuals coming together on a field to play and then disburse (I know that is not reality, but to me it seems to be the linguistic legacy of the term).

So would you write People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are ... then "PETA are" as well?

I'll admit, it's a swamp. Frankly, I think the British have it right :)

fish

[Peter Fisk]

I tend to treat People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as a singular. But it has nothing really to do with whether or not it's a sports team. I perceive a lot of non-sports organizations as often (though not always) needing to be treated as plurals. The Jaycees for example, and the Shriners. A quick Google search seems to confirm that most people agree on those. Neil's observation -- that the presence of a definite article seems to be a significant factor -- is well-taken.

My point is that there is no universal rule in American English for dealing with collectives, and the individual usage choice is not always governed by what's demonstrably "right" or "wrong" or even logical.

Yeah, in a way it would be convenient to treat them all as plural, as the Brits seem to.

One thing this thread underscores is the how essential it is to be fully immersed in a language in order to copy-edit in that language. How on Earth could a remote copy desk in Bangalore properly address American English nuances such as these?

[rich]

One thing this thread underscores is the how essential it is to be fully immersed in a language in order to copy-edit in that language. How on Earth could a remote copy desk in Bangalore properly address American English nuances such as these?

That is the question.

Or it is one of the questions.

Another one is: Should newspaper editors insist on brand-name English, if employers have the option of going to Bangalore for a generic version?

In Bangalore, job seekers may use some of our own biases in their defensive arguments, saying, for example: The purpose of language is to communicate accurately and precisely; such communication is or can be the product of a particular type of study involving logic, syntax and what some call semantics. The desired result is not achieved by abject editorial submission to a projected stereotypical (if hypothetical) world of readers whose imagined usages are tuning devices for the ears of editors.

And, alas, no matter how much we may insist that the regional vernacular with which we are most familiar is better than others, we may be forced to acknowledge that the purpose of language is not to communicate inaccurately and imprecisely.

So what do we say to bargain-hunting employers?

[Gerri Berendzen]

Well, there's the fact that our readers probably want American-brand English and not the Queen's variety — as that is what they are used to. They probably also expect to get the regional nuances in word usage (like knowing what a parish is in Louisiana as opposed to New York).

In Bangalore, job seekers may say the purpose of language is to communicate accurately and precisely, but the grammar they consider accurate and precise might not be accurate and precise to readers half way around the world.

I'm not suggesting there aren't non-native English speakers who can edit in American English. I'm sure there are plenty. It's just that I've recently had two very long conversations with outsourced help desks in India, and I'm positive we weren't communicating accurately and precisely. I think that's related to bargain-hunting employers.