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The grammar of numbers
Two plus two is four, right? Well, the more you know about language, the more you might wonder about that basic equation. Maybe two plus two is four, but then again, maybe two plus two are four. Whether you’re an ace or airhead when it comes to math, you’ve no doubt struggled with grammar and numbers at some point. Quantities, fractions, slippery words like total and majority, team and staff—it’s sometimes hard to tell whether a thing is singular or plural. Quantities One of the most common number questions I get in my grammar workshops concerns whether collective nouns such as total, number and majority are singular or plural. The answer (not necessarily what participants want to hear) is, it depends. It depends on whether the noun refers to a single entity or to plural items and, often, on whether the noun is preceded by a or the. Take total, number and range, for instance. When preceded by a, these nouns usually team up with a plural construction and are treated as plural. When preceded by the, they refer to a single entity and are singular. A total of 82 dancers have signed up for the cha-cha competition. The total has exceeded our expectations. A number of adolescents are wearing midriff-baring T-shirts this summer. The number of adolescents wearing midriff-baring T-shirts this summer is higher than ever. A range of homemade jams, jellies and chutneys are for sale at this year’s craft fair. The range of products for sale at the fair is staggering. It helps to realize that when we combine such nouns with a, we create familiar expressions that are often synonymous with some, many or numerous and are therefore plural. This realization can help with other words, such as bunch and couple, whose number is determined more by their sense than by the preceding article. A bunch of us are headed to the drive-in for tonight’s double feature. (a bunch means some) A bunch of bananas is less expensive, but also less romantic, than a bouquet of flowers. (a bunch refers to a single entity) A couple of dogs are peeing on my lawn. (a couple means two) A couple is entitled to a Valentine’s discount with this vacation company. (a couple refers to a single entity) Majority is much like bunch and couple. When it refers to a plural (which it usually does), it’s plural, but when it refers to a single entity, it’s singular. A majority of voters in the referendum have chosen to destroy their ballots. (a majority means most of them) The majority of these Pop-Tarts have frosted tops, but I’ll try to find you a plain one. (the majority means most of them) Because you have argued your point so persuasively, the majority has sided with you. (the majority refers to a single entity) A couple of footnotes about majority: Some usage texts, such as the Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage (2nd ed., 2007), remind us to avoid majority when writing about things that can’t be counted and can’t therefore have a logical majority—for example, work, information or time. In these cases, most is a better choice. Most [not the majority] of the time, you can count on Natalie to tell you if you’re wearing something unflattering. Other texts, such as Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed., 2009), go further and point out that most can replace a/the majority quite often, producing crisper prose and a more natural plural. Numbers Like nouns of quantity, other numerical expressions can shift from singular to plural, depending on whether they refer more to plural things or to a single amount. The three hours he spent watching A Brief History of Horticulture last night were the longest of Marvin’s life. (emphasis on the individual hours) Three hours was simply too long for a documentary on shrubs, he decided. (emphasis on the single amount) Fine, you might say, but there are numbers, damned numbers and then statistics. True, percentages and fractions can seem perplexing, but usage authorities are consistent in their advice: the number is determined by the noun following the percentage or fraction. According to this survey, 64 percent of respondents need eyeglasses when they read. The consultant says that 38 percent of the database needs to be updated. As night falls on the wilderness park, one quarter of the campers are blaring their radios and three quarters of the campers are stewing. One quarter of the park is noisy; three quarters is silent. Other collective nouns Collective nouns that are less number-oriented can be equally troublesome. Group, team, committee, staff and so on—are they singular or plural? Here, usage authorities take slightly different positions depending on which side of the Atlantic they call home. In the U.K. these nouns are usually treated as plural. In North America they’re usually treated as singular, except when the members of the collective are acting independently, in which case the nouns are considered plural. In the photo, the team is holding aloft a banner that says "Debating Rules!" (the team is acting as one entity) The team are arguing among themselves about who started the on-ice fight. (the individuals are acting separately) Though the latter sentence is correct, many Canadian editors would change it to "The team members are arguing . . . ." or "The players are arguing . . . ." to make the plural sound more natural (and to satisfy editors’ innate fussiness about consistency). Indeed, with collective nouns, consistency matters above all. As Bill Bryson notes in Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, "A common fault is to flounder about between singular and plural. Even Samuel Johnson stumbled when he wrote that he knew of no nation ‘that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability.’ " So keep the debating team singular and the hockey team plural. Don’t count on numbers And what about two plus two? The fact is that with equations, singular and plural are both correct, though singular is preferred. Once again, consistency matters more than the choice itself. In math, it’s easy to distinguish between one and more than one. But in language, it’s not that simple. In language, it depends. The grammar of numbers is mutable, which is both the challenge and the beauty of this imperfect science. Related quiz Test yourself—The grammar of numbersSource: Peck’s English Pointers (articles and exercises on the English language)
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The ups and downs of capitalization
In the spring of 2011, I read a one-page promo listing the events that would kick off the annual conference of the Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC) in Vancouver. Describing the red-carpet reception, the promo said: "The dress code is charmingly unclear: Dress up; Dress down; Dress as your favourite literary character or Public Personage of Note." Lest you worry that no one is proofreading EAC publications these days (as if!), I hasten to add that the one-pager, titled "The West Coast Editor Bugle," was written and printed in the style of a 1901 broadsheet. The whimsical capitalization harked back to a time when capital letters were used more subjectively than systematically, to draw attention to words by elevating them, literally, above the rest of the content. This "capital letters as spotlights" approach has had a long history in English. In the seventeenth century Robert Burton, scornful of his "scribbling age," when people would write anything to become famous (clearly the precursor of our own "scrambling age," when people will do anything to become famous), vented in capitals: "They will rush into all learning, divine, human authors, rake over all Indexes and Pamphlets for notes,…write great Tomes…."(The Anatomy of Melancholy). Similarly, eighteenth-century novelist Laurence Sterne dedicated The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy to William Pitt, stating: "Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication…being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life." Whether it’s an improvement or an impoverishment, today’s approach to capitalization favours rigour over whimsy. On the surface, the rules are simple: capitalize the first word of a sentence, the main words in a title and any proper noun. But dig deeper and you’ll find all kinds of tangled applications. Proper versus common nouns Particularly confusing to today’s writers is the difference between proper nouns (official names of specific nouns), which are capped, and common nouns (general names of general nouns), which are not. In the workplace this confusion usually leads to excessive capitalization, as in this sentence from a government document, sweetly but unintentionally reminiscent of a bygone era: "The new Management Tool allows for the electronic creation and submission of Travel Requests and Expense Reports." Here, all the nouns are common and should be lowercase. Part of the problem is that, increased standardization aside, capitalization rules are still as varied as the martini list in an upscale bar. The best bet is to consult a current style guide, yet different guides advocate different approaches. Take job titles and ranks, for instance. The Canadian Style (2nd ed., 1997) takes an "up" approach, capping titles when they refer to a specific person: the Leader of the Opposition, the Assistant Deputy Minister, the Archbishop. The Canadian Press Stylebook (16th ed., 2010) takes a "down" approach and generally lowercases titles (unless they’re formal titles that directly precede the name): the prime minister, the deputy minister, the archbishop. Or consider this question, which made the rounds among my editing colleagues: should rivers be capped in "My friend has paddled down the Nahanni and Alsek rivers"? CP Stylebook and The Canadian Style both say no. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed., 2010) says yes. But Chicago has flip-flopped on the matter enough to give even the sturdiest editor whiplash. The previous edition (15th) said lowercase, while the edition before that (14th) said caps but noted that the guide’s former preference had been lowercase. Derivations of proper nouns Words derived from proper nouns usually keep the noun’s caps; thus we refer to a Canadianized textbook, Dickensian plots and European fashions (often worn by Eurotrash). But again, variations abound. Here’s a sampling of how Chicago, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd ed., 2004) and The Canadian Press Caps and Spelling (19th ed., 2009) treat derivations. Roman numerals (CanOx) BUT roman numerals (Caps and Spelling, Chicago); roman type (all three) Dutch oven (CanOx) BUT dutch oven (Chicago) Swiss cheese (CanOx) BUT swiss cheese, unless actually made in Switzerland (Chicago) French door (CanOx) BUT french door (Caps and Spelling); french fries (all three) Acronyms and initialisms Don’t fall into the trap of automatically capitalizing a term that can be shortened to an all-caps acronym (when the letters are pronounced as a word) or initialism (when the letters are pronounced as themselves). The decision to cap the term depends on whether it’s a common or proper noun. GDP: gross domestic product (common noun) MOU: memorandum of understanding (common noun) NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (proper noun) RCMP: Royal Canadian Mounted Police (proper noun) ESL: English as a second language (proper and common nouns) Tricky names, bumpy names You’d think that at least proper names, of both people and organizations, would be straightforward. Not so. Some Public Personages of Note prefer to lowercase their names. CP Stylebook and Chicago recommend respecting the preference of such individuals, who include singer k.d. lang and activist bell hooks (but not poet E. E. Cummings, whose name, scholars have determined, was lowercased by his publishers). Names of companies, institutions and the like are typically capitalized, but some organizations, usually for promotional reasons, render their names in all caps (EKATI, NAV CANADA) or all lowercase (adidas, gordongroup). In their own documentation, organizations can decorate their name with whatever flourishes they like, but CP Stylebook and Chicago advise using customary capitalization for such names (Ekati, Nav Canada, Adidas, Gordongroup). What about the explosion of organizations (NRCan, TVOntario, HudBay Minerals), not to mention products and services (BlackBerry, iPod, eBay), whose names are a blend of caps and lowercase? Camel case, as this style is evocatively called, has been around a long time in chemical formulas (NaCl) and names (MacNeil), but the phenomenon got a healthy boost during the dot-com era. Since then, more and more names have gone bumpy: Federal Express is now FedEx; the Workers’ Compensation Board of New Brunswick is WorkSafeNB; Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children is SickKids. An article in New Scientist (October 27, 2007) describes the two camel styles that have arisen as "UpperCamelCase" (HarperCollins) and "lowerCamelCase" (iTunes). CP Stylebook, Chicago and The Canadian Style agree that such midcaps (to use Chicago’s term) should be preserved. The guides depart, however, on how to handle lowerCamelCase at the beginning of a sentence. CP Stylebook says to capitalize the first letter of a word such as eBay and iPod if it starts a sentence (page 279); Chicago says not to (section 8.153); The Canadian Style, written before most e-age spellings developed, is silent on the issue. Looking aHead In her futuristic novels Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood satirizes the allure of camel case with names such as AnooYoo (a spa), CorpSeCorps (a security company) and SecretBurgers. Midcaps are the wave of the future, her writing implies, and I have to agree. The Editors’ Association of Canada conference whose events were listed in that 1901-style broadsheet? Its theme was "Editing in the Age of e-Everything." You can imagine how much discussion went into the capitalization of that title. Related quiz Test yourself—The ups and downs of capitalizationSource: Peck’s English Pointers (articles and exercises on the English language)
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