Is there standard grammar for this plural/singular mash-up?

You’re right – Americans use singular verbs after group nouns, while Brits use plural.

An American would say “Congress is…” and a Brit would say “Parliament are…”

@Mariah it seems though that journalists vacillate on this, or perhaps that is the mark of “poor” journalism, those that aren’t grammatically fact-checked (though as much as I love proper grammar, I do think it has its holes and this is one of them. group nouns are inherent “group-y, so….treat them as such!)

I think Americans are just wrong on this one.

“We, the Miami Heat, are having a shitty season.”

But at the same time it’d be really weird to say “A team are…”

The Miami Heat is ONE team. So the Miami Heat (team) is playing well. “the team is good, the teams are good”

One team . . . singular.

The Miami Heat is awesome. I actually saw them play, I love living in South Florida!

synesis

It’s easy to find people who are willing to cite a rule about this, whether based in Latin grammar, some kind of obscure logic, or the inevitable “sounds good/sounds funny” argument. In fact, you can find authorities making a case for both treatments, together with elaborate sets of guidelines and examples for when to use the singular or the plural verb, and the division is not just along national lines.

As far as I am concerned, either way is right sometimes, and for a particular case, the main thing is to be consistent within a given document or context.

Re RBI:

If it’s based on the expansion of RBI, then one run batted in is an RBI.

More than one run batted in would be Runs Batted In, so it’s always RBI, and the amount of RBI would determine whether the R stood for Run or Runs.

E.g., I think “He had 134 RBI in 1979” is correct

@mrrich724

“The Miami Heat is awesome.”

I think there’s a decent chance of a repeat of the 2006 NBA Finals. ;-)

A name such as Miami Heat is a group of people, so the correct grammar is, “The Miami Heat are playing.”

I’m not a sports nut, so I don’t know what RBI stands for, so I can’t tell you whether it’s RBI or RBIs (it’s not RBI’s as some people use).

BUT – you could make the case, however, that is RBI were taken at face value, as in an abbreviated noun, 2 abbreviates nouns would be, RBIs.

So what if you are talking about a band, does it sound right to say: Soundgarden win the grammy, or Soundgarden play?

@mrrich724 New York’s American League baseball team is one team too. But somehow I doubt you’d think it proper to say “The Yankees is currently in first place”.

@MrItty now you are going into a whole new territory, with having an “s” at the end of a team name….! :)

not to mention an “x,” ala “Red Sox”

How about the Calgary Hitmen?

Basically, there’s three options:
1) All team names are singular nouns. (Yankees is. Heat is.)
2) All team names are plural nouns (Yankees are. Heat are.)
3) Team names’ singular/plural factor is directly dependent upon the format of the noun itself. (Yankees are. Heat is.)

Personally, I prefer option 2. Any given team is a collection of the players on that team, and when you’re talking about how the team is doing, you’re really talking about how the players on that team are doing.

@MrItty

“Basically, there’s three options:”

Are you sure there isn’t more options? ;-)

ah crap. Really the wrong time to make a grammatical error. Sigh.

i hardly think ESPN sports casters are even journalism or english majors. Their screipt writers may be, but as you are noticing, it sounds odd coming from them as most Americans do not speak that way. If you are writing for a book, I can understand using certain standards.
For the spoke word and jock speak, I think it matters not.

@blueiiznh as much as I loathe much of ESPN, I do believe they have seriously high journalistic grammar standards…

@mrrich724

I agree that those are the 3 basic options for this issue.

My guess is that very few people go with option one, even though Mariah is right in the sense that in both of your examples, we’re talking about a team.

However, I think the awkwardness of phrases like, “Yankees is” makes option 1 too untenable for most native English speakers, including me.

I think I usually go with Option 2 also.

I definitely feel more comfortable saying “Yankees are”.
I think I usually say, “Miami Heat are”, but I haven’t thought about it enough before this OP to see what my pattern actually is.

One reason why I haven’t is that there are so few team names that don’t end with an “s” or a soft “z” sound.

Not that it’s an exalted reference for proper grammar, but Wiki uses option 3 for the Heat and the Yankees.

This may be totally different, but before we really were united, we used to say “The United States of America are…”. Now, we say “The United States of America is…”.

@dxs, not totally different at all, totally the same-ish. (however, that deals with the last word, America, as the modifier…)

Edited/deleted by me.