Company: 'it' or 'they'? (2025)

Do you use 'it' or 'they' to refer to a company?



Here is an example:

General Computers Inc. purchased a large server for $750,400. They paid 40% of the value as a down-payment and received a loan for the balance at 7.54% compounded annually. If the loan was for 5 years and they had to make year-end payments to settle the loan calculate the size of their payments.

We were told to creatively re-write such questions to refer to a company by using 'it', or repeat the company's name, or use 'the company'.



Any suggestions?

It depends on the type of English.

Both are absolutely correct, while American English has a strong preference for companies and organisations to be grammatically singular, British English has a strong preference for them to be plural. That sentence is perfectly fine to me, and perfectly grammatical. I say the plural to indicate the plural form, because it's easier for most people to understand, when in fact they is a perfectly good singular pronoun for non-gender specific referents, but this is what then opens up a prescriptive/descriptive linguistic debate, so it's easier to call it plural sometimes.

Why you were told to rewrite your sentence, is beyond me.

What if I have a sentence like this:

Geox has a lot of products in their stores, pretty much everything they offer online.

How do I reconcile the singular "has" with the plural "they"??

Thank you!

Hi susanna

I think you have to go with either:

Geox have a lot of products in their stores, pretty much everything they offer online.
or
Geox has a lot of products in its stores, pretty much everything it offers online.

I think I'd use the plural version nine times out of ten, susanna (or even more often).

But I wouldn't find the singular version strange if I saw or heard it.

Kaytsan said:

Hi!
So is it ok to use the plural form of a verb with "company"? X company receive or receives machinery? Which is more common and formal?
Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

According to this, companies are "it" not "they"

Companies Are “it”, Not “they”

OlgaMR said:

According to this, companies are "it" not "they"

Companies Are “it”, Not “they”

Click to expand...

That is a good description of the practice in AE. It is different in BE, as illustrated, for example, by Loob above.

OlgaMR said:

According to this, companies are "it" not "they"

Companies Are “it”, Not “they”

Click to expand...

Thank you!