Grammar girl here, I'm often asked questions about what pronoun you should use when you're

writing about a company or a group such as a board of directors.

Is it a company who makes jelly beans?

Or is it a company that makes jelly beans?

And was it the board of directors who voted against puse jelly beans?

Or the board of directors that voted against puse jelly beans?

I believe the thing that confuses people about which pronoun to use is that even though

companies are entities, they're made up of people.

But separating those concepts can help you figure out which word to use.

We talk about companies doing things all the time.

When I look at today's news, I see that General Motors will hire a thousand people for a technology

center near Atlanta, and that Ford doubled the dividend it's going to pay on its stock.

Although companies are just legal entities and it's the people who work at the companies

who take all the actions, to say the company did something is a form of shorthand because

it would get cumbersome to always have to say something like the HR staff at General Motors

will hire a thousand people, and the directors at Ford decided to double the dividend.

Yet although we use shorthand to treat companies as though they can take action, we don't treat

them as people when we have to choose a pronoun.

The correct words to use when referring to a company are that and it, not who or they.

For example, you'd write, United Helium, the company that always had a bouncy house on

hand for executives, will be acquired by Gravity Corp in January.

It will be forced to give up this practice under new management.

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