The Courts-Martial was justified/The Courts-Martial were justified.

[Iain2]

I have had it on good authority, including the BBC, that the plural of Court-Martial is Courts-Martial. (not an ‘s’ added to Martial) Because of it, which of the following two is correct ?

The Courts-Martial was justified.
The Courts-Martial were justified.

Thank you…, Iain.

 

[emsr2d2]

I have had it on good authority, including the BBC, that the plural of "court-martial" is "courts-martial" no full stop here (not an ‘s’ added to "martial"). Because of it, Which of the following two is correct?

1. The courts-martial was justified.
2. The courts-martial were justified.

Thank you. Iain.

Welcome to the forum.

Sentence 1 is wrong because you can't use the singular verb "is" with a plural noun ("courts-martial"). Sentence 2 uses the correct form of the noun and the verb.

There is no need to capitalise "court-martial". It's a common noun.

Whenever you give us more than one sentence to consider, please number them. It makes it easier for us to refer to them in our responses. Don't put a space before a question mark. End every sentence with one appropriate closing punctuation mark. Remember to mark out the words you're asking about in some way. I have enclosed them in quotation marks above.

Also note that I have improved your thread title - titles should include some/all of the words/sentences you're asking us about. Your actual question should appear only in the main body of your post.