Timeline for How to refer to plural of mathematical symbols - with or without an apostrophe
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 5, 2015 at 12:11 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Todd Trimble | ||
| Jan 5, 2015 at 11:45 | comment | added | Yuichiro Fujiwara | @PeterLeFanuLumsdaine I understand what you mean. I just meant closeness to phonetic realization doesn't justify particular written form, and that "justify" doesn't make sense unless we're trying to set up a publisher's style guide or something. I'm sure you understand why, and I don't think many users on MO get the point. (See how people are arguing which is correct and which is wrong...) If we want to be serious, OP's question is already not good; a better (but off-topic) question would be which is more common, which is your choice and why, which is preferred by this journal's style, etc. | |
| Jan 5, 2015 at 11:21 | comment | added | Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine | @YuichiroFujiwara (continuing the possibly unnecessary seriousness): A less prescriptivist approach is exactly what I’m trying to advocate! I believe that in speech, the explicitly-pluralised-with-a-[z]-phoneme version is more common/natural than the zero-pluralised version (it’s at least a common choice), and so saying “you can’t write that, because it looks terrible” (or “…is wrong”) is an unreasonably prescriptive stance. Unless you read the zero-pluralised written form as representing the explicitly-pluralised spoken form — but I don’t think most people read it that way. | |
| Jan 5, 2015 at 10:58 | comment | added | Yuichiro Fujiwara | @PeterLeFanuLumsdaine Ha-ha, I wasn't serious. If you want a more serious comment though, I don't think a rule that is "more logical" or "more reasonable" is better for the same reason prescriptive grammar sucks. Linguistics deals with descriptive grammar for a reason. | |
| Jan 5, 2015 at 10:49 | comment | added | Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine | @YuichiroFujiwara: sure, yes. I’m not advocating spelling reforms. But when there are multiple existing conventions (as in this case), closeness to speech can reasonably be a factor in the choice between them. | |
| Jan 5, 2015 at 10:41 | comment | added | Yuichiro Fujiwara | @PeterLeFanuLumsdaine Oh, you want a phonemic orthography?. That battle is already lost when you chose English. | |
| Jan 5, 2015 at 9:26 | comment | added | Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine | In speaking, many mathematicians would pluralise it. Why not in writing also? Both options suggested are visually awkward, true; but it’s also awkward, in a different way, when orthography fails to follow speech. | |
| Jan 5, 2015 at 8:44 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| Jan 5, 2015 at 8:54 | |||||
| Jan 5, 2015 at 8:25 | history | answered | Myshkin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |