Writing Tip
Avoid Optional Plurals
Difficulty Level: Basic
Recommendation: Avoid optional plurals.
How do you read the following sentence? “The grounding electrode(s) is a crucial element of good power quality.” This “(s)” is called an optional plural. However, when we see an s at the end of a noun, we are compelled by our automatic reading machinery to pronounce it. In this case, a plural phonic noun (the subject in the sentence) disagrees with the sonic verb and causes a train wreck.
Note: Optional plurals also take the form of “X (and Y),” as in:
Continued success (and adequate funding) helps further program support.
Even if you set off an additional subject in parenthesis, you have a compound subject but a singular noun. But this tip does not focus on that type of optional plural.
Optional plurals also appear as objects in sentences. In fact, this tip was prompted by a member of my tip list. His question was, how do you handle a sentence like the following?
Following are instructions on how to determine when to process an interval(s).
That sure seems like a contrivance to me. Sure, the author is trying to inform the reader that the object of the verb may be either singular or plural, but that linguistic meaning should emerge from the context. You could have one or you could have multiple intervals, and this meaning probably depends on the reader (is the reader planning to process one or multiple processes?). So, it doesn’t matter what the number of the noun is, as long as it makes sense.
Compare “Following are instructions on how to determine when to process an interval” to “Following are instructions on how to determine when to process intervals.” They are semantically identical. Just because something can be plural, that doesn’t mean that you need to make that possibility explicit. When you eat orange(s), you get a boost of vitamin C, right? But everyone already knows that you can eat one orange or several oranges if you want to, and your readers will know that you may have more than one interval to select for processing.
Here’s another example, with a twist:
First, the user must determine the break point/s. (“/s” instead of “(s)”)
Still, you see the s, and you pronounce it and process the noun as a plural.
I recommend that instead of using optional plurals like “(s)” or “/s,” either use the s or drop the awkward construction completely. So, for example, if we transform the first example to “Grounding electrodes are crucial elements of good power quality,” the reader understands that a single electrode may be installed at a single site and that the author is referring to a system of electrodes. On the other hand, we can say “The grounding electrode is a crucial element of good power quality,” in which case the sentence takes on an abstract quality, and an abstraction is usually singular, as in “Among all fruit, the apple is the most nutritious.”
One final note: My recommendation applies to fluid reading only. Optional plurals are okay (but still a bit clumsy) in, say, a title or a head, but during fluid reading, they simply pose tripping hazards for readers.