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[marty147]

lonexpat, on 2012-02-07 14:00:39, said:

Marty 147, I  understand what you"re saying  and agree with you whole heartedly but a similar situation came up recently. In my experience you will rarely hear a British person use was when it comes to collective nouns. Liverpool was the best team. Everyone I know  would say Liverpool were the best team whereas the Americans say Liverpool was the best team.  

A good grammar book would be invaluable in this instance to avoid championing rules based on personal experience.

A great book that I always refer to is "Practical English Usage" by Michael Swan.  He is widely acknowledged as one of the great grammar gurus.  

This is his opinion:  In British English, singular words like family, team, government, which refer to groups of people, can have either singular or plural verbs and pronouns.  The team is/are going to lose.

Edited by marty147, 2012-02-07 16:30:34.

[rijb]

Linguistic nitpicker William Safire says writers should “go with the natural sound of the language. If the team name ends in s, go with the plural verb…. If not, construe it as singular.”

http://lisakusko.wor...-grammar-world/

http://minnesota.pub...ive/2008/01/17/

[lonexpat]

I consider both to be correct because that"s what I"ve been taught. Please don"t ask for a link. People of my age are sometimes illiterate when it comes to computers. Actually, he was an American. His opinion was the use of singular, collective nouns was incorrect. How was a person to know  wheather an individual or a group were the subject  of a statement?. Change the sentence from the team to the players and there"s only one answer. Grammar rules are byfar some of the hardest rules to explain. Knowing them to be correct is a lot easier. Again, I"ll go with rijb on this. If it sounds right, it normally is right. To me, were sounds right. To someone else, was sounds right. Same Same but Different.

Edited by lonexpat, 2012-02-07 20:32:48.

[sysardman]

lonexpat, on 2012-02-07 14:00:39, said:

Marty 147, I  understand what you"re saying  and agree with you whole heartedly but a similar situation came up recently. In my experience you will rarely hear a British person use was when it comes to collective nouns. Liverpool was the best team. Everyone I know  would say Liverpool were the best team whereas the Americans say Liverpool was the best team.  

I don't think anybody would say Liverpool was/were the best team

[Ijustwannateach]

My take:  since 'percent' means 'per 100', when you write '7 percent of the oranges' it is another way of saying '7 oranges out of 100 oranges'- so in the case of a countable noun  you would use 'go' in the OP example.  If it were uncountable you would use the singular form- 8% of the ice cream is strawberry.