Is mankind a a plural noun or a singular noun?

Question

Would you say:
"mankind's tendency to desert its individuality"
or
"mankind's tendency to desert their individuality"
or
"mankind's tendency to desert his or her individuality"

Answer 1

Mankind is singular as in the following sentence:
"Mankind is heading for disaster"
It is not - "Mankind ARE heading for disaster"

Part of the problem with your sentence has to do with the actual content. In most circumstances, mankind would not ordinarily be thought of as having an "individuality" - mankind is an all-encompassing group for our species, so what individuality would such a group have? You might try the following:

"It is human nature for man to forsake his individuality."

In a proper paper, it is still acceptable to use "him/his" to refer to both sexes for singular indefinite pronouns, but attitudes are changing. In my opinion, the sentence above sounds better with "his" than "his or her". Hope this helps.

Answer 2

It's a collective noun. It refers to one unit made up of many people.

You would form the sentence as if it was singular: 'mankind's tendency to desert its individuality.'

Answer 3

Singular. Like "Mankind IS capable of flababababa." So, the first one. But it sounds a little weird. I'd rephrase the whole thing to "People have a tendency to desert their individuality."

Answer 4

Mankind is a singular noun. So it would be "Mankind's tendency to desert it's individuality".
Same with the word humanity.

Answer 5

Is Mankind Singular Or Plural

Answer 6

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/awp2b

It's not easy to explain this, because English is illogical (etymological) language. Still, I think I may be able to explain you this. 1 always represents singular. All other numbers represent plural. This is common in many languages, except Japanese, for example, where there's not defined by a fine line what is singular or plural, so for example, if you say Tsubasa ( wing(s) ) on Japanese it can be either plural or singular, depending on context. This is not likely to happen in English language. Let's see it on examples. I have one T-Shirt. - you have solely one of the specific kind. I have none (zero) T-Shirts. - generally you don't possess any form of T-Shirts (you lack them). Note: none is the same as zero. It represent nothingness. Same thing is with no one, no body. Be careful, zero is not always in plural. For example: Let's rendezvous at the point zero. - when you are not expressing quantity but merely a number, like in this military language, zero is always in singular. Noun before it will not have changed just because it is followed and linked to a number afterwards. This is same thing with two, three, four, etc. They won't change noun's number. One can never be plural. It describes only one thing and as we know definition to singular - it describes nothing more than one thing. Zero is by logic in plural definition because plural says that it describes more than one thing. You cannot say, I have zero friend. What would be meaning of this? It's a bit of contradiction because you are expressing you have none friends (friends are the contextual group) whereas writing zero friend would refer to some state illogical to mankind. You cannot have none friends and yet one friend at the same time. That is what it should mean when you write singular after the zero. I hope this was helpful!

Answer 7

Mankind is singular. It is also non-gender specific:
'Mankind's tendency to desert its individuality'

Answer 8

"mankind's tendency to desert its individuality"

It is a singular noun.

Answer 9

I would naturally say "Mankind's tendency to desert its individuality.", but I'm not too sure of what it should be...

Answer 10

Mankind is gender neutral and treated as singular, because it is a common noun.