Date:  Tue, 7 Mar 1995 10:47:00 EST

From:  Electronic Products Magazine <0004276021[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MCIMAIL.COM>

Subject: Re: the Ozarks and other plurals



An Irish colleague tells me that the British use of "their" instead of

"it" to modify collective nouns is just a matter of how people think.

In the British world, a company or a nation is thought of as

comprising people--therefore the plural. In the U.S., we sometimes

think of a company as a, well, corporate unit, hence an "it."



"Trades unions," my friend reports, are in the British world unions that comprise many trades. A "trade union" would be a union for one

trade. Usage I guess has a lot to do with counting, a mathematical

approach to grammar.



Leonard Schiefer

Chief Copy Editor

Electronic Products Magazine



lschiefer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]mcimail.com