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Deparatment of Redundancy Department

Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

huskyfan said:
the plural of sergeant major is sergeants major. the plural of lieutenant colonel is lieutenant colonels. huh?
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Major is an adjective, even though it appears after the noun (sergeant). In the other example, colonel is the noun.

Romance languages (French, Spanish, etc) care about the number of the adjective, too, so they would say "sergeants majors, lieutenants colonels, blues balls, etc." :)
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

LynahFan said:
Actually, there are two exceptions which are covered at the link I posted. You do use the apostrophe for pluralizing letters (mind your p's and q's) and to pluralize a word that is self-referential (their example is, "There are 15 and's in that paragraph.")
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FWIW, the Chicago Manual of Style Fourteenth Edition uses the apostrophes for proverbial expressions "Dot your i's and cross your t's", but just the letter s for pluralizing letters "xs and ys" and "the three Rs":confused:
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

huskyfan said:
not that this has anything to do with anything, but the mister and I get a kick out of stupid adjectives used by news people. poverty. no one lives in poverty. they live in "grinding" poverty.
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Yup. And another one I had to school my people on was the use of "only" or "just" in describing how long a jury took to come to a verdict. "only three hours?" Where's the rate card on that one? It's an editorial opinion (albeit a small one) posing as information. The reporter clearly thinks it should have taken longer. It would be a simple matter to find someone connected with the trial, or just your basic random lawyer, to apply the editorial observation. This is one that happens so often, most of us don't even notice it.

Unrelated, this morning one of those chirpy, female morning news anchors was bringing Phoenix up to date on an overnight situation where a mentally disturbed woman with a gun had holed up in her house. The copy was not intending to be funny. But I found the sentence: "The woman came out of her house shortlly after the police fired teargas inside" to be amusing. Yeah, tear gas frequently has that affect on nutty women.
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

CLS said:
I don’t think that one’s so clear. “RBI” is used so pervasively that a lot of people think of it as the term itself and not as an abbreviation. If that’s the case, then RBIs is proper as the plural. It’s kind of awkward because unlike many compound nouns if you pluralize “run batted in” you don't pluralize the last term.

If the federal government started a second Federal Bureau of Investigation, would there then be two FBI or two FBIs?
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Indeed. Less clear for sure.

However, it still tweaks me a bit. Actually, it gets me in the same way as people who talk about "my brother-in-laws." I just wish people would learn how to use the language properly, and with RBIs, it is an incorrect usage that is so prevalent that it has become correct. Of course, if I were consistent, I would love it for that reason, because that is exactly how the language adapts (at least one of the ways) but as Maude said to Harold, "consistency is not really a human trait." :)
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

duper said:
I just wish people would learn how to use the language properly, and with RBIs, it is an incorrect usage that is so prevalent that it has become correct.
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It is not incorrect. Google up almost any grammar guide you like and you'll see that adding an s to the end of an acronym is proper usage. RBI itself is NOT automatically plural. Does "he hit an RBI single" mean that two or more runs were scored on the play? Not at all. Therefore, when talking about multiple runs batted in, you are talking about RBIs.
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

LynahFan said:
It is not incorrect. Google up almost any grammar guide you like and you'll see that adding an s to the end of an acronym is proper usage. RBI itself is NOT automatically plural. Does "he hit an RBI single" mean that two or more runs were scored on the play? Not at all. Therefore, when talking about multiple runs batted in, you are talking about RBIs.
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Yes, because pluralizing abbreviations in that way has been common usage for long enough to BECOME CORRECT. I suspect that if you looked up a usage guide from 1800 you's get a different story.

As to your example, if two runners score, do we say he hit an RBIs single? I get what you're saying, but your example doesn't actually illustrate your point, and my point is that the language has adapted in that way, and that for some reason it bugs me, even though language adaptation usually makes me happy.
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

duper said:
Yes, because pluralizing abbreviations in that way has been common usage for long enough to BECOME CORRECT. I suspect that if you looked up a usage guide from 1800 you's get a different story.
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I really doubt it. Abbreviations and acronyms were not all that commonly used until the 20th century - the word "acronym" didn't even exist until 1943. Sure, there are exceptions (SPQR), but they really took off once the GIs came back from VE day... I'm guessing that their pluralization wouldn't even have been addressed in a style guide from 1800.

As to your example, if two runners score, do we say he hit an RBIs single?
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Obviously not, but that doesn't disprove my point.
I get what you're saying, but your example doesn't actually illustrate your point
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Sure it does. My only point is that "RBI" *can* be single, so it is appropriate to pluralize it whenever you're talking about 2 or more of them.
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

LynahFan said:
I really doubt it. Abbreviations and acronyms were not all that commonly used until the 20th century - the word "acronym" didn't even exist until 1943. Sure, there are exceptions (SPQR), but they really took off once the GIs came back from VE day... I'm guessing that their pluralization wouldn't even have been addressed in a style guide from 1800.
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Correct. I maintain that moving the s to the end would have been considered incorrect. However, like everything else in an evolving language, when everyone does something, it can become correct. So, RBIs is correct because everyone does it.

LynahFan said:
Obviously not, but that doesn't disprove my point. Sure it does. My only point is that "RBI" *can* be single, so it is appropriate to pluralize it whenever you're talking about 2 or more of them.
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I wasn't trying to disprove you. You seemed to be using that as an example to prove your point, but in order to prove that the purpose of the "s" is to make it clear whether the RBI is singular or plural, your example doesn't cut the mustard, because "RBI Single" does not tell me whether one, two, or three runs were driven in. A single that drives in two is still an RBI single so it is not necessarily pluralized whenever it describes more than one.(Granted, three is VERY unlikely.)

Ok. I'll stop being bull-headed now.
 
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Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

Wow, I saw the most pernicious one ever:

"this program is brought to you with limited commercial interruptions...."


right, as opposed to continuous commercial programming.


I guess there is QVC and Home Shopping Network, or pay-per-view or subscription, but isn't everything else "limited" in "interruptions"?
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

duper said:
I wasn't trying to disprove you. You seemed to be using that as an example to prove your point, but in order to prove that the purpose of the "s" is to make it clear whether the RBI is singular or plural, your example doesn't cut the mustard, because "RBI Single" does not tell me whether one, two, or three runs were driven in. A single that drives in two is still an RBI single so it is not necessarily pluralized whenever it describes more than one.(Granted, three is VERY unlikely.)
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Ah - maybe this is because I don't actually watch baseball. I thought that the term "RBI single" was used specifically for a play where a single run was scored, but if the same term is also used if 2 or more are scored, I understand what you mean, so your "bull-headedness" paid off. :)
 
Re: Deparatment of Redundancy Department

LynahFan said:
Ah - maybe this is because I don't actually watch baseball. I thought that the term "RBI single" was used specifically for a play where a single run was scored, but if the same term is also used if 2 or more are scored, I understand what you mean, so your "bull-headedness" paid off. :)
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Actually, I think "RBI single" may be OK. In this case "RBI" is an adjective (or if you prefer "RBI single" is a compound noun) indicating the single resulted in an RBI (which doesn't preclude resulting in more than one RBI). So you could say "He hit an RBI single that produced two RBIs".

I feel differently than duper. "Ten RBI" sounds awkward to me. It comes across to me as baseball announcers pompously trying to sound like they use proper English, when in fact sports announcers are among the worst grammar butchers alive.

Re: "IRA account" I believe that originally IRA stood for "individual retirement annuity", though I suspect that most people who use "IRA account" don't know that.
 
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