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Always Refer To Companies In Singular Form
When I started writing professionally, I always treated companies as a plural noun. I never even gave it much thought. Since companies are made up of a group of people, I assumed I was referring to every single one of those individuals whenever I wrote.
Looking back at those pieces that actually made it to print, the editors fixed up my misuse of plural verbs and changed them to their singular form instead. Oddly enough, I never noticed them correcting it in the past and simply went about writing in plural like I always did.
When I got my first English writing software a few years ago, I was surprised that it kept flagging my plural use of company names as a mistake. I checked out grammar books to prove that this software had it wrong. Of course, I ended up discovering that I’ve been doing a critical mistake over and over.
As it turns out, companies should be treated the same way in your writing as a single person. Same with countries, organizations, governments and other groups. If you’re guilty of the same mistake, make sure to keep that in mind.
Over the last few years, English grammar software has bailed me out of so many writing errors, I honestly couldn’t keep track. To this day, I consider my investment in a good grammar software as one of my best professional decisions.
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