Advanced English Grammar: Collective Nouns

TRANSCRIPT So, for example: do you say: "The staff was invited to the BBQ." or do you say: "The staff were invited to the BBQ."? I&afraid I have to tell you there&actually no rule that decides this. What decides this is you. What do you want to say? What is your intention? Do you want to talk about the individuals or do you want to talk about the group? So, for example, look at this sentence: "My staff consists of young and old alike." "Alike" is basically like "both", both young and old. Now, why am I using the singular? Because here, I&talking about my entire staff, my whole collection of employees. Right? So I&probably going to use the singular because I&talking about the one unit. Here, I could say both; I could say: "My staff", my entire unit of employees or I could talk about all the individual people who work for me were invited to the BBQ. So, again, it&more about what you want to intend... What you want to say, what you intend. Sorry, you don&want to intend anything. Okay? Here&another example: "My family are going to be citizens soon." "My family was invited to a wedding." I have a plural, I have the singular; it depends what you want to say. "My family" - means all the members of my family - "are going to be citizens soon." It makes a bit more sense when you also have the plural here, "are" and "citizens". It sounds a little bit more natural. "My family was invited to the wedding." The Smiths, we... My family is the Smiths, so when the invitation came, the...