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Suppose you have a team composed of several persons. If I want to designate this team without repeating "team", which word do I have to use ? "it" or "they" ?

In other words, which one of the following sentences is correct ?

The team decides whether it wants to work on this project or not.

The team decides whether they want to work on this project or not.

Maybe both are correct.

  • In the first one, "it" stands for one single entity but associates the human sensation "I want to work on this project" whereas a team is not a human.
  • In the second one, "they" implicitly stands for the members of the team but I am not sure of the correctness of "The team ... they ...".

I would very appreciate to have some feedback on those 2 formulations.

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Unda
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    Relevant question on the ELU SE: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/183101/germany-is-are-in-the-nato-alliance-clarification-please/183105#183105 – user8543 Jul 24 '14 at 09:52
  • Your question title is totally ambiguous. You need a "verb" after"How to". – Neeku Jul 24 '14 at 10:13
  • @Neeku, fixed it. – Dangph Jul 24 '14 at 10:28
  • Looks better now. (: – Neeku Jul 24 '14 at 10:28
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    Related: http://ell.stackexchange.com/a/24919/3281. That question came to mind immediately once I saw your question. Though the other question is about the subject-verb agreement, basically that question and this one ask the same thing, when a group of people is considered plural, and when singular. – Damkerng T. Jul 24 '14 at 10:40
  • Thanks for the links. So I guess that the 2 formulations are correct. @Neeku Sorry for that, I didn't notice I forgot a word in the title. – Unda Jul 24 '14 at 11:09

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