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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

Yep, there seems to be this tendency to evaluate all the actions of all the people inside a company as a single coherent whole, expecting there to be single coherent thread running through it all. It's almost like people think of the company as a single person - a kind of anthropomorphization maybe. Companies may strive for alignment, but they're not the Borg, and they certainly don't have the capacity to micromanage every single decision for every single employee.

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It's interesting how American/Canadian English uses the singular for groups of people, while British English uses the plural:

"Apple helps Asahi Linux" (American).

"Apple help Asahi Linux" (British), as if there's a "people" after Apple.

As someone who has worked as a sub (copy-editor) in the UK for many years in the past I cannot begin to describe exactly how completely incorrect this is.

If you are going to write something like that you really should explain.

Well he said he can't begin to describe...

Have to agree - as a Brit, using 'help' there is just ... wrong

Not really. It's absolutely normal to see, for example, sports clubs and teams used as plural noun in the UK press; hence by extension it cann be used for any org. I know because it's a big gotcha for us Europeans, who tend to use the singular there.

British or American version?

That seems odd to me (as an American) because Apple is not plural, and often times when it is a group of people by identity you do use the plural for them (eg Americans help Asahi Linux). Would British folks say “England help Asahi Linux” as well?

No, they would not. Don't mistake erroneous colloquial speech for what's "correct" in written English. This is wrong, and so is the original example.

Yes, I believe that would be correct. Apple is plural in the sense that it is made up of multiple people acting in unison. Same as "My family are visiting over Christmas."

However, the word Americans is not a group of people in the same sense that USA, England, Apple, or family is. Its kind of like the distinction between people and persons.

Edit: the term for words like family is "collective noun". More at https://blog.harwardcommunications.com/2017/02/07/the-family...

Another American here. I never knew this. How common is this? Have I just assumed it’s a typo every time I see it? Or has (have?) the British media just become more Americanized like most places?

I am Canadian myself and generally follow the American style, but I believe it is very common, though not universal. Scanning The Guardian, they (!) seem to follow the American style, though this paragraph popped out at me where they use both:

> Labour [singular] takes comfort partly from the fact it expended little effort or money on the seat, allowing the Lib Dems [plural] to declare themselves in the best position to challenge the Tories.

But an American publication would probably write the same, because the name Lib Dems is itself pluralized.

"Labour" is a party name, and it is singular. "Liberal Democrats" is a party name, and it is plural. The verb is agreeing with the number of the noun, just as is usual in English.

I don't think that's the case; British English would say "X help Y" when X is a collective noun referring explicitly to a group of people, eg a football team ("Manchester United have scored"), or a band ("Radiohead are playing a concert today"). This means that "Spain (the country) is ..." but "Spain (the football team) are ...".

See here for details: https://editorsmanual.com/articles/collective-nouns-singular...

That's more or less what I said, except a lot more nuanced.

It's not that American English uses singular for groups of people. It's that American English sees Apple as a singular corporate entity.

British English peers past the corporate veil to see the singular corporation as it's underlying people.

American English generally uses singular for collective nouns. British English generally uses plural. There are exceptions (such as if the name itself is pluralised), but that's the general rule. Whether its "peering past the corporate veil" or not is neither here nor there, as they treat all collective nouns this way.

No. Singular nouns require singular verbs, in both countries.

Sure, but there is some disagreement across the pond on which nouns are singular.

Brits would be more likely to say “Led Zeppelin are on stage”, while Americans would prefer “Led Zeppelin is on stage”, and the reason is the disagreement between whether Led Zeppelin is singular (one band) or plural (4 people constituting the band.)

I wish you could provide some more details or substance so that I might know why your experiences contradict mine.

Is that because whatever company we work for ourselves, those in charge tend to push that narrative so much?

We get constantly bombarded by our own employers with messages of unity and vision statements and the business plan and the message etcetera. So even when we pause and think about our own experiences and we realize how many varied voices and agendas there are within, we’re conditioned when referring to a brand employer like Apple to reduce them to a single point of view.

    we’re conditioned when referring to a brand employer 
    like Apple to reduce them to a single point of view.

Maybe? Americans also tend to be individualistic (often to a fault, many would say)so I'm not sure there's a cultural significance at work here.

It's probably informative that British English tends to refer to most (all?) collective nouns this way. It's not some corporation-specific thing.

Sports teams are the most obvious example - a Brit would say "Team A have defeated Team B" rather than "Team A has defeated Team B."

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