NY Times' Sassy Apostrophes

I'll never stop marveling at NY Times' use of apostrophes to form plurals of initialisms. It's a valid choice. I just don't get the why.

What's the Plural of Chili?

I came across "chilis" in a document I was editing today and did a double-take. I could not, for the life of me, remember how it's usually written. So I looked it up.

Webster's New World says the preferred plural of chili is chilies, but also allows chilis.

And now, after a few minutes of staring at them, they all look wrong to me ...

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

meatloaf

I saw "The Soloist" this weekend.

In it, Robert Downey Jr., who plays Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, narrates a few excerpts from his columns in progress. In one, the Lopez character talked about Los Angeles' Skid Row, where the homeless former Julliard student Nathaniel Ayers was living. Lopez/Downey said Skid Row was home to "rats the size of meatloafs."

Or, at least, that's what I thought I heard.

I checked the Times archives. But Lopez has never mentioned meatloaf and rats in the same column. (I guess he doesn't eat at Denny's.) So the supposed column excerpt was probably added by a screenwriter.

The idea of a plural "meatloaf" interests me. The word is usually treated as a mass noun. (As opposed to a count noun. Think "milk" as opposed to "marbles.") But must it be? Can we have our meatloaf and count our meatloaves/fs, too?

Neither Webster's New World College Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Online, American Heritage via Dictionary.com nor Dictionary.com's own entry offers a plural form or any discussion of whether "meatloaf" can be a count noun.

Dictionaries usually volunteer spellings of irregular plurals. For example, under "loaf" Webster's includes: "pl. loaves." So we can only assume that the dictionaries aren't down with "meatloaf" as a count noun.

That leaves us to wonder: Just how big is a rat the size of "meatloaf" and would it, therefore, have a guitar and a bit part in the "Rocky Horror Picture Show"?

That'd be one rat out of Hell.

(I know. The musician's name is two words. Still, I couldn't resist.)

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

index

I could have sworn that, years ago, I learned that the proper plural was "indices" and that "indexes" was a less-preferred form that was slowly gaining dominance.

Nope.

Webster's New World, American Heritage, and Merriam-Webster all list "indexes" as the first choice for the plural. A Google search shows that users feel the same way, 75 million to 42 million in favor of "indexes."

So I pulled out my 1955 Oxford Universal Dictionary, certain I'd find evidence that the preference for "indexes" was a recent development. Nope again. This big dusty book also prefers "indexes."

Too bad. I like "indices." If it were preferred, it would be like a fun plot twist in the middle of written work -- something to keep you on your toes. But no.

Doozy of a Mistake in 'NBC Nightly News' Graphic

A weather graphic in last night's NBC Nightly News showed not one but three instances of:

Sundays' High

They were referring to the previous day's temperatures. So they meant Sunday's High.

Here's the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#28354137. The graphic is 1 minute, 23 seconds into the story. (Sorry I couldn't embed. Something was wrong with the embed code on their site.)

Don't Assume the Boss is Grammar-Smarter Than You -- Especially If the Boss Works in Hollywood

A friend wrote recently with a question. She had just applied for a job with a powerhouse entertainment company that made her take a grammar quiz. One of the questions: What’s the plural of pizza?

My friend, having been raised in society and not in a hole in the ground, is fully aware of the word “pizzas.” I have no doubt that she has heard it thousands of times and said it thousands of times, too.

But she let the question throw her, and that was her big mistake.

Pizza? Well, pizza’s a food. And if you have one pepperoni pizza and then you order a mushroom pizza, what you really have is more PIZZA, right?

I’m paraphrasing her explanation, but that was the general idea.

My friend felt stupid, but she was actually being very smart. She was exploring her innate understanding of “mass nouns” versus “count nouns” – even though she had never heard the terms.

Count nouns are countable things, like “smiles.”
Mass (or non-count) nouns are words like “happiness.”

Yes, there’s some overlap. You can have meat and more meat but several types of meats.

“Pizza” has even clearer boundaries than meat (crusty, delicious, circular boundaries stuffed with cheese if you're lucky). We are much more likely to say “a pizza” and “some meat” than “a meat” and “some pizza.”

But that doesn’t even matter. What matters is the quiz asked for a plural. Mass nouns, for practical purposes, don’t have plurals. (Unless you really stretch it, such as with “happinesses.”) So the question could have only referred to the countable “pizza” and not the mass one.

My friend overthought it and got it wrong.

The lesson here is one we knew all along: To make it in Hollywood, check your brain at the big white sign.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

"media are"— 5.4 million hits
"media is"— 14.7 million hits

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

pair

On the radio today, I heard something like, "Kids should bring two pair of shoes."

I've always heard "pair" used as the plural -- interchangeable with "pairs." So I figured it was okay. (Personally, I hate it. But that's just my prejudice and one I wouldn't try to foist on anyone else.)

Today I finally looked it up.

Webster's New World College Dictionary permits either "pairs" or "pair" as the plural, but prefers "pairs." American Heritage Dictionary, remarkably, lists "pair" as its first preference, but also allows both.

As for other usage questions, including whether to choose "the pair is" over "the pair are," American Heritage adds:

The noun pair can be followed by a singular or plural verb. The
singular is always used when pair denotes the set taken as a single
entity: This pair of shoes is on sale. A plural verb is used when the
members are considered as individuals: The pair are working more
harmoniously now. After a number other than one, pair itself can
be either singular or plural, but the plural is now more common: She bought six
pairs (or pair) of stockings.