collective pronoun- singular or plural?
1. The audience clapped enthusiastically. Obviously ___ had enjoyed the concert.

2. The crowd at the soccer game has huge. ____ exceeded 100,000 people.

The answers to the first question and the second one are "it" and "They" respectively, but I find it hard to understand. Can someone please help? I thought that "they" should be used in the first question since it's these "people" who had enjoyed the concert and that "it"(as in "the number exceeded ... ) should be used in the second.

Question

collective pronoun- singular or plural?
1. The audience clapped enthusiastically. Obviously ___ had enjoyed the concert.

2. The crowd at the soccer game has huge. ____ exceeded 100,000 people.

The answers to the first question and the second one are "it" and "They" respectively, but I find it hard to understand. Can someone please help? I thought that "they" should be used in the first question since it's these "people" who had enjoyed the concert and that "it"(as in "the number exceeded ... ) should be used in the second.

Answer

Technically, both should be "it".  Both audience and crowd are singular nouns, even though they are collective. However, in common spoken usage, it would not be unusual to to treat them as if they were plural. This is most likely in sentence 1.

Does that help?

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