FAMILY is or FAMILY are.......

My family is a wonderful family.

My family are very close to one another.


In the first sentence, the noun family is used as a single unit of people. This sentence is correct if you think of the family as ‘a single body’.

But in the second sentence, family is treated as plural as the speaker wants to emphasize that every member in their family is close to one another.

The word 'family' is an example of a 'collective noun'. Some other words in this category are 'group', 'committee', 'jury', 'team', 'public', 'army', 'congress', etc.

So, the question that whether a collective noun should be treated as singular or plural solely depends upon up on what you want to say i.e. if you think of the collective noun as a unit, treat it as singular, as in

'My family is settled in USA’, ‘The team is in its best form these days’, ‘The jury needs to be impartial in its verdict’, ‘The committee was able to take a firm step against the culprit’ etc.

But if you take a collective noun as individuals acting separately, treat it as plural, as in

‘My family are very co-operative with one another’, (emphasis on each member of the family)

‘Strangely, the team are wearing jerseys of different colours’ (emphasis on each player in the team)

‘The jury have unanimously agreed to the new proposal of the government’ (emphasizing each judge in the jury)

The committee meet once a month’ (emphasizing that each member is present once in a month without fail)

This rule is often strictly followed in British English though this confusing grammatical rule is slowly becoming flexible in modern English.

In American English, collective nouns are almost always treated as singular for example, if you type ‘The jury are considering the verdict’ in MS Word, the software will underline the words ‘jury are’ and prompt you to use ‘jury is’. The reason, as you probably know, is that MS Word accepts only American English grammar and spelling unless you have changed its settings to British English.