The audience were fascinated by his speech. - English example sentence

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DJ_Saidez 19 days ago April 6, 2024 at 7:59:26 AM UTC

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were --> was (?)

sundown 19 days ago, edited 19 days ago April 6, 2024 at 9:48:43 AM UTC, edited April 6, 2024 at 9:49:43 AM UTC

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In British English, "were" is fine here, as would be 'was'. It depends on how you view nouns like this which refers to a plurality of (in this case) people, whether you consider it to be plural in nature. In British English, you could also say "the crowd were fascinated (excited, etc)", but you would use 'was' in a sentence like: "The crowd was large," since that refers to the thing as a whole impersonally; it doesn't refer to the feelings, attitudes, emotions and so on of the members of the crowd.

See:

https://www.collinsdictionary.c...glish/audience

"with singular or plural verb"

I hope that helps.