plural collective nouns

[MANMEET SINGH]

On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Karstad-Schueler wrote:

> JOSEPH E. LAFERRIERE wrote:>
> John McNeill wrote:
>
> > I think the confusion that many English speaking people have with names
> > of families and higher taxa that are plural is that what we are really
> > wanting to say is:  "the family Asteraceae is ...." and so sometimes
> > find "Asteraceae are ...." a little odd.


it won't look odd if we recognise the presence of word family in former
and its absence in the latter

Dr. Gurcharan Singh