"People" should be treated as 'singular' or 'plural'?

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yagatino@gmail.com - 06 Nov 2006 11:14 GMT

I'm not a native English speaker.
As you can see the subject above, I am a bit confused about the use of
"people".
I thought "people" should be treated as a 'singular' noun.

After googling, I could find this sentence.

I know and in such situations indirect proves, evidences or witnesses
can serve well. People looks different when they come back from 8000m
or above as if they returned from 6500m for example.

I ,however, find these sentences.

Sometimes people think we're sisters.
People enjoy reading about the rich and famous.

In these sentences, two verbs, think and enjoy, do not have '-s'. It
saids that the sujects, people, are not a singular noun.

How can I use "people"?

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Lars Eighner - 06 Nov 2006 11:25 GMT

In our last episode,
<1162811673.162579.320600@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, the lovely and
talented yagatino@gmail.com broadcast on alt.usage.english:

> I'm not a native English speaker. As you can see the subject above, I am a
> bit confused about the use of "people". I thought "people" should be
> treated as a 'singular' noun.

This issue has been discussed frequently here in the past. Most of the
time "people" is now merely the plural of person. Construction should
be as if the word were "persons." Only when people means a nation or
a community (rather than a number of persons) is people constructed as
singular.

> After googling, I could find this sentence.

> I know and in such situations indirect proves, evidences or witnesses
> can serve well. People looks different when they come back from 8000m
> or above as if they returned from 6500m for example.

This is not acceptable in any dialect I know of. It should be "People look
different ...."

> I ,however, find these sentences.

> Sometimes people think we're sisters.

Correct.

> People enjoy reading about the rich and famous.

Correct.

> In these sentences, two verbs, think and enjoy, do not have '-s'. It
> saids that the sujects, people, are not a singular noun.

> How can I use "people"?

Treat it as if it were "persons" when it has the sense of more than
one person. I am not addressing here the issue of what to do when
"A people" means a nation.

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Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> <http://myspace.com/larseighner>
Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats. -- O'Neill

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

"People" should be treated as 'singular' or 'plural'?