Editing Encyclopedia:Manual of Style (section)

===Plurals===
{{Shortcut|MOS:PLURALS|MOS:SINGULAR}}
{{See also|English plurals|Collective noun}}
{{for|the article title guideline|Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals)}}

Use the appropriate plural; allow for cases (such as ''[[excursus]]'' or ''[[hanif]]'') in which a word is now listed in major English dictionaries, and normally takes an ''s'' or ''es'' plural, not its original plural: {{xt|two excursuses}}, not {{!xt|two {{lang|la|excursūs}}}} as in Latin; {{xt|three hanifs}}, not {{!xt|three {{lang|ar-Latn|hunafa}}}} as in Arabic.

Some [[collective noun]]s{{snd}}such as ''team'' (and proper names of them), ''army'', ''company'', ''crowd'', ''fleet'', ''government'', ''majority'', ''mess'', ''number'', ''pack'', and ''party''{{snd}}may refer either to a single entity or to the members that compose it. In British English, such words are sometimes treated as singular, but more often treated as plural, according to context (but singular is not actually {{Em|incorrect}}). In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular; the major exception is that when a sports team is referred to by its short name, plural verbs are commonly used, e.g. {{xt|the [[Miami Heat|Heat]] are playing the Lakers tonight}}.

Names of towns and countries usually take singular verbs (even when grammatically plural: {{xt|the United States is in North America}}, {{xt|the Netherlands is also known as Holland}}), but exceptionally in British English, typically when used to refer to a sports team named after a town or country or when discussing actions of a government, plural is used. For example, in {{xt|[[England national football team|England]] are playing [[Germany national football team|Germany]] tomorrow}}, ''England'' refers to a [[Association football|football]] team; but in {{xt|England is in the Northern hemisphere}}, it refers to the country. See also {{section link||National varieties of English}} including {{section link||Opportunities for commonality}}.