| Write without errors Improve your writing with , which catches grammar and spelling errors and provides Thesaurus-powered synonym suggestions | Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments |
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| People We often use collective nouns to refer to groups of people | Look at each of the following sentences and see if you can understand why the given noun is a collective noun, a compound noun, or both |
Both Flash mob is a collective noun because it is a singular noun that refers to a group of people.
| Both can be singular nouns or plural nouns | Crowdsourcing the public participation process for planning projects |
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| Both can be concrete nouns or abstract nouns | Examples: a herd of cows, a litter of kittens, a pride of lions, a school of fish, a murder of crows, a clowder of cats, a clan of hyenas, a flamboyance yes, really! Unlike the sound plurals the plural is formed by adding an extra letter in the middle of the word |
| By contrast, collective nouns must refer to more than one person or thing even when used as a singular noun | Communications of the Association for Information Systems , 762-780 Brabham, D |
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| This is unlike English which only has the singular and plural | The flock is grazing quietly in the meadow |
What is a collective noun? Possessive collective nouns can be tricky because they imply that the entire group owns or contributes to something.