Singular team names

This isn't a moral issue. It's a style issue.

"Heat is" is perfectly defensible, grammatically speaking. The Washington Post has decided to use singular verbs with singular nouns.

The AP, for a perfectly good reason, has gone the other way and made team names plural in all cases.

So ...

If your paper follows AP style, use AP style.

If your paper sets its own style, make a decision and stick with it.

 

The whole point of having singular team names, the reason they started doing it, is to emphasize the idea of the team as one unified force, a collective singular representing the combined efforts of all its consitutent members -- players, coaches, etc etc.

At least, that's the original hippy-dippy new-age concept behind it.

Thus, "the Heat IS."

Not, "the Heat are."

Of course, this is another example of the creeping Euro/Britization of American English, especially in regards to sports teams and musical groups.

"U2 are embarking on a new world tour."

 

From the sports section of the AP Stylebook:
collective nouns Nouns that denote a unit take singular verbs and pronouns: class, committee, crowd, family, group, herd, jury, orchestra, team.
However, team names such as the Jazz, the Magic, the Avalanche, take plural verbs.

 

ha ha! Suck it everybody!

 

Sam Adams. Fetch one please, newb. Suck that.

 

The way to get around that mess is to avoid the usage altogether. I'd just say, for example, "Minnesota is" and to heck with using "Wild is" or "Wild are" in that spot. That's a godawful nickname to begin with.

And make mine a Scapegoat Pale Ale or a Moose Drool Brown Ale, thanks.

 

I'd be careful about blindly following along with either AP style or Washington Post style because that's the way a big outfit does it. There are certain things that a newspaper of any size ought to develop that make sense for its readers. Or even its editor.

I had a student newspaper advisor who was a freelance writer for The Washington Post when I wrote for my community college paper back in the day. She got me into a habit of run on sentences in ledes that I'm still trying to overcome now. I can still remember the lede graf of one story that was turned into a wicked long sentence.

Of course, you could always adopt British style and say the team are.

 

Tell Glenn Frey that.

 

+1 on avoiding it and going with the city name. It's much easier that way.

When we get stuck using at collective name, it probably changes from time to time because none of us can seem to remember what we did the time before!

 

Nice.

 

I certainly don't mind the style discussions here -- style is one of my main deals at my place -- but it seems necessary to say it on every one of these threads.

There is no right or wrong on an issue like this. There's only one issue: Setting a style, and sticking to it at your institution, every time.

Our place, all team names take the plural verb. That's our style.

The Washington Post style might be different, but with all due respect to the Post, their style is no more correct or incorrect than ours.

As noted above, in England, it's "England are." To me, that sounds stupid. But that's the way they do it.

So pick one, set it in stone, and do it the same way every time.

 

One last attempt to win over any reluctant converts, so forgive the continued overkill on this subject.

Just as everyone should handle Notre Dame's Fighting Irish, team nicknames like the Jazz and Heat should be treated as singular plurals. After all, it's understood that we're not talking literally about jazz as a musical form or heat as the top end of a mercury thermometer, so why is it so hard to grasp the reality that a word can take on a new form as a proper noun?

From Merriam-Webster ...

Main Entry: 1plu·ral
Pronunciation: plrl, plür-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English plurel, plural, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French plurel, from Latin pluralis, from plur-, plus more + -alis -al
1 : belonging to a class of grammatical forms used to denote more than one <plural noun> <plural pronoun> <plural endings>, used to agree with syntactically related forms denoting more than one <plural verb> <plural adjective>, and used in languages (as ancient Greek) having a dual form to denote more than two -- opposed to singular
2 : relating to or consisting of or containing more than one <plural citizenship> <plural winner> or more than one kind or class <plural population> <plural society>

Doesn't say anywhere in there that a plural word must end with an s.

Of course, as was similarly noted before, the issue is addressed specifically in the almighty AP Stylebook. In the main section, under the "collective nouns" entry, is this ...

Team names and band names, however, take plural verbs.