Kirk Mahoney . com

I heard this from someone the other day.

Problem:
The word “ones” is unnecessary in this phrase.

Explanation:
The individual said a sentence such as “Those ones are bigger.”

The word “those” in the phrase “Those ones …” is acting as a determiner.

Other examples of “those” as a determiner include:

• “I like those chocolates.”
• “Do you want those tickets?”
• “He should give her those flowers.”

Also, it is possible to pluralize the singular numerical pronoun “one”, as in the following examples:

• “I like the vanilla ones.”
• “The ones in green are tickets for the front row.”
• “Are the pink flowers the ones that he wants?”

However, when the word “ones” is preceded by a plural determiner (such as “those”), it is best to drop the word “ones”, thereby converting the determiner “these” into a demonstrative pronoun, as shown in the following examples:

• “I like those.”
• “Do you want those?”
• “He should give her those.”

Solution:
“Those …”

I heard this from a small boy the other day.

Problem:
The word “ones” is unnecessary in this phrase.

Explanation:
The boy said a sentence such as “These ones are bigger.”

The word “these” in the phrase “These ones …” is acting as a determiner.

Other examples of “these” as a determiner include:

• “I like these chocolates.”
• “Do you want these tickets?”
• “He should give her these flowers.”

Also, it is possible to pluralize the singular numerical pronoun “one”, as in the following examples:

• “I like the vanilla ones.”
• “The ones in green are tickets for the front row.”
• “Are the pink flowers the ones that he wants?”

However, when the word “ones” is preceded by a plural determiner (such as “these”), it is best to drop the word “ones”, thereby converting the determiner “these” into a demonstrative pronoun, as shown in the following examples:

• “I like these.”
• “Do you want these?”
• “He should give her these.”

Solution:
“These …”

While recently investigating a system that daily sprays for this pest, my thoughts went to the the correct pluralization of the noun “mosquito”.

Problem:
It is not always clear how to pluralize a noun that ends with the letter “o”.

Explanation:
Years ago, U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle became the butt of jokes when he told a student that the word “potato” should be spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E.

The veep’s misspelling was likely due to the fact that the plural of “potato” — which is spelled P-O-T-A-T-O — is spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E-S.

In other words, this singular noun with an “o” at the end is pluralized by adding E-S, not by adding only S.

Similarly, the singular noun “mosquito” — spelled M-O-S-Q-U-I-T-O — is pluralized in English by adding E-S instead of by adding S.

I believe that some American English speakers pluralize the singular noun “mosquito” by adding only an S because this is how the noun is pluralized in Spanish and because of the increasing influence of Spanish on American English

Solution:
Use “mosquitoes” with an O-E-S ending for English. Use “mosquitos” with an O-S ending for a language such as Spanish.

I saw this on the cover of a brochure that my wife got recently.

Problem:
“Trainings” is not a word.

Explanation:
“Professional Trainings: 2008-2009″ was the full title of the brochure from a “Training Institute for Improved Health”.

The brochure described various educational sessions to be presented by the Institute.

The word “training” as a noun means the instruction or education of a person who is being trained.

Given that the nouns “instruction” and “education” have no plural form, the noun “training” has no plural form, and therefore “trainings” is not a word.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks, to prevent variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “training” — 725,000,000 matches
• “trainings” — 13,700,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 52.9:1, which is good, but the fact that the Web contains nearly fourteen million instances of “trainings” is outrageous!

It is also clear that erroneous pluralization of the noun “training” is definitely a common English blunder.

For fun, I also searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “professional training” — 5,190,000 matches
• “professional trainings” — 47,700 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 109:1, which is much better, especially when one notices that “trainings” returned about fourteen million matches but that “professional trainings” returned fewer than fifty thousand matches.

I suppose that this says that most professionals know that “trainings” is not a word!

Solution:
“Professional Training”

I often hear sentences (mis)constructed in this way.

Problem:
There is a singular/plural mismatch.

Explanation:
The phrase “a lot of cats” is singular, even though “cats” is plural, because “a lot” is singular.

The “are” form of the verb “be” is plural.

So there is a mismatch in number between “are” (plural) and “a lot of cats” (singular).

Solutions:
“There is a lot of cats here.”
or
“There are lots of cats here.”

This post is not about a problem, explanation, and solution.

Instead, it’s about an interesting word whose use is designated as Chiefly Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas.

I first saw this word when I moved to Houston, Texas. It was on the sign of a popular restaurant and was written with an apostrophe and ’s’ as “Lagniappe’s”.

I don’t know whether this apostrophe-’s’ form on the sign was meant to be a possessive or was supposed to be a plural noun but was a blunder by a sign maker who is part of the crowd of sign makers who insert apostrophes where they don’t belong.

Leaving aside the possessive-apostrophe/plural issue and focusing on the singular noun, a “lagniappe” is something that is added to a purchase as a gift by a merchant, to say “Thank you!” for doing business with the merchant.

A commercial, mass-marketing version of a “lagniappe” could be a cosmetics bag given with a purchase of Lancôme perfume. However, the noun “lagniappe” is traditionally reserved for what an individual merchant adds, such as a small bag of fertilizer when the customer buys several flower bulbs.

The noun originally was “yapa” — Quechuan for that which is added.

Spanish speakers in Mexico turned this into “la ñapa”.

I don’t know where the French speakers from Louisiana first heard “la ñapa” and converted it into the French spelling — “lagniappe” — for the same pronunciation.

But I imagine that the greater Houston area could have been that location, given its mingling of people from Mexico and people from New Orleans and other French-speaking parts of southern Louisiana.

So there you have it: an American English word tied to Houston at the intersection of Spanish and French speakers.

I saw this at Amazon.com.

Problem:
“Pair” is a singular noun being used incorrectly as a plural noun, and two commas are missing.

Explanation:
As I wrote last November, two of anything together is a single pair. Multiples of this means multiple pairs.

I continue to believe that use of “pair” instead of “pairs” helps to prove my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say “pair” than to say “pairs”.

Beyond the “pair” problem, the product heading is missing a couple of commas.

“Gold” and “Angled” and “Spade” modify the noun “Connectors”; when one has multiple modifiers of a noun, commas should appear between the modifiers (in this case to get “Gold, Angled, Spade Connectors”).

I believe that omission of commas in a multiple-modifiers situation also is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to omit the commas than to include them, and advertising copywriters lean toward simpler text, even if it is grammatically incorrect and is more difficult to read.

Solution:
“Monster … Gold, Angled, Spade Connectors (2 Pairs)”

I saw this in a PowerPoint presentation as the title of a list of ways for teams of employees to communicate with one another during a weekend software-launch project.

Problem:
The plural form of medium for most of its definitions, including the one used in this title, is not “mediums”.

Explanation:
One of the definitions of “medium” is psychic (someone who claims to be able to communicate with the dead or predict the future).

The definition of “medium” that the title writer had in mind is means of communication. The title writer probably put the word “Communication” at the start of title to emphasize that she was using this particular definition.

The plural form of “medium” when it means psychic is “mediums”; the plural form of “medium” for other definitions, such as means of communication, is “media” (not “mediums”).

Solution:
“Communication media:”

I have wondered for years about which of these is the correct form.

Problem:
The fifty state governments in the USA are inconsistent in the way that they refer to licenses issued to drivers.

Explanation:
I searched the Web for the form used by each of the fifty state governments.

Some state government had two official ways to refer to these licenses. Most state governments had only one way. No state government used “Drivers License” (plural, with no possessive apostrophe).

Here are the names of the states whose governments use one or more of the three forms on their own websites:

• “Driver License” (35 states):  Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana (also in “Driver’s License” list), Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania (also in “Driver’s License” list), South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin
• “Driver’s License” (16 states):  Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana (also in “Driver License” list), Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania (also in “Driver License” list), Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming
• “Drivers’ License” (1 state):  Delaware

Ignoring the two “undecided” states (Indiana and Pennsylvania), we see that “Driver License” is favored by a ratio of more than 2.35 to 1 over “Driver’s License” (thirty-three states vs. fourteen states).

Solution:
I doubt that the fifty state governments ever will agree on a single form for referring to licenses that they issue to drivers. The best for which we can hope is that any given state government with multiple ways will settle on a single form and that Delaware will come to its senses about “Drivers’ License”.

I heard this from a USGS spokeswoman on television.

Problem:
The noun “phenomenon” is not plural.

Explanation:
The phrase “one of” should be followed by a plural noun.

The noun “phenomenon”, which means an observable occurrence, is the singular of the plural noun “phenomena”.

I believe that the use of “phenomenon” in place of “phenomena” represents hypercorrection. In particular, because so many people hear that “phenomena” is not always the correct noun, they use “phenomenon” even when “phenomena” is the correct noun.

Solution:
“One of the most deadly phenomena …”