Friday 16 February 2007

More Editing - singular/plural

During your first-level editing, you will also be looking for singular/plural usage. Firstly, look for those words that need an irregular ending to make them plural. For example, antenna is singular; if you are writing about more than one radio or TV antenna, the plural is antennas; if you are writing about insects, the plural you need is antennae. Here are a few more:

datum (singular), data (plural) (Note: colloquially data is used as singular)
bacterium (singular), bacteria (plural)
criterion is (singular), criteria (plural)
medium is (singular,) media (plural)
stratum is (singular,) strata (plural)

If you're not sure, use your dictionary, which will tell you if a word is singular or plural. It surprises me sometimes that many writers obviously do not check word usage; this is the sign of the amateur and many editors, when they see a work peppered with mistakes like this, will not read further. Of course, if the work is brilliantly original, or if you're a 'known name' a publishing house will work with you to correct errors, but if not, you need to get it right first time.

As you work through, editing your manuscript, you will come to realise that the actual writing takes but a fraction of time compared to the work you will need to do afterwards.

Watch things like:

sister-in-law (singular) and sisters-in-law (plural). I often see 'sister-in-laws' which is incorrect. Colloquially, we do see 'the in-laws' but this is not quite the same.

Collective nouns refer to groups, and these can be singular or plural. If you think of the group as a single unit, use a singular verb. If you think of the group as a number of individuals, use a plural verb. For instance:

Our little group is complete again.
A second group are those parents who feel that they were too harsh.

Our family isn't poor any more.
My family are perfectly normal.

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