Pronoun Agreement with Collective Nouns

A pronoun must agree in number with the word it refers to. The word that a pronoun refers to is called its antecedent. If the antecedent is singular, the pronoun should be singular. If the antecedent is plural, the pronoun should be plural.

Some pronouns have collective nouns as antecedents. A collective noun is a word that is singular in form but refers to a group of people or things, such as team, band, committee, and family.

Use a singular pronoun to refer to a collective noun when the group functions as one unit. For example:

The team was honored for its victories.

When you want to refer to individual members of a group, use a word that names the members rather than the collective noun alone. For example:

The team members were paid different amounts depending on their ability and performance.

Members of the team were paid different amounts depending on their ability and performance.

In each of these examples, the plural pronoun their correctly refers to the plural antecedent members rather than to team.

In which sentence does the pronoun correctly agree with its antecedent? The committee will release its report on Wednesday. The committee will release their report on Wednesday.