Learn English – the optional plural form of a word that ends in “‑y”

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I guess “optional plural” is the correct term. I’m referring to things like

It can be found at the following location(s).
Please pick up your ticket(s).

But how do I do that to a word that ends in ‑y? Take category for example: “category(s)” doesn’t seem correct, because categorys is a misspelling. But everything else I have tried looks ridiculous.

What’s the correct approach here?

Best Answer

Words that end in -Cy regularly go to -ies, while those that end in -Vy regularly go to -Vys (where C means a consonant and V means a vowel).

bunny > bunnies, telly > tellies, category > categories
Monday > Mondays, boy > boys, monkey > monkeys

But money > monies is irregular.

You could write

Please select your preferred category or categories.
Please select your preferred category(-ies).
Please select one or more categories.

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If you have a computer program that does the equivalent of:

printf("%d %s(s) selected.\n", count, thingie);

Then you are automatically doing it wrong. A computer should know how to count. And inflect. It is pure laziness — and not the good kind, either — on the part of programmer to write

1 file(s) deleted.

That sort of thing is extremely aggravating. Please do not do it. In the specific case of having a category for a thingie, you would use

printf("%d categor%s selected.\n", count, count == 1 ? "y" : "ies");

Accept no substitutes.

In the more general case, you need an English noun inflector.

Related Solutions

Learn English – the plural form of “zero”

Both zeros and zeroes are acceptable, see e.g. Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary or TheFreeDictionary.

The usage stats from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC) look as follows:

              COCA   BNC

zeros          312   132    
zeroes.[n]     106     5

So in practice zeros is preferred in the US and even more so in the UK, though citations for zeroes include such prominent examples as Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time. (Mr Hawking is British, but the book was first published by an American publishing house.) The oldest citation for zeroes in the BNC is from 1978. The Corpus of Historical American English has six citations that are even older, the oldest one being from 1914.

Learn English – Number agreement when using “(s)” for optional plural

According to The Chicago manual of style Q&A,

A term ending in “(s)” is both plural and singular. If you must use such a device (and it can be a useful shorthand), you have to be prepared to adjust the surrounding context as necessary: for example, “the award(s) is (are) accounted for.” A parenthetical plural verb must correspond to the parenthetical ending. But that’s an awkward example. In general, avoid such shorthand unless it can be used simply and effectively, as in the following example:

Place an “about the author(s)” statement on the copyright page (usually page iv).

In other words, the use of this shorthand might be useful in examples such as,

The identification number(s) of the prisoner(s) must be logged upon arrival.

The identification number(s) of the prisoner(s) must be logged upon his (their) arrival.

However, in other cases such as the OP's, it can be ambiguous and confusing as there's no consistent way to maintain singularity or plurality thanks to the presence of the determiner, an. In such instances, it is best to reword the sentence to something along the lines of,

Selecting one or more appropriate study topics.

Best Answer

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Related Solutions

Learn English – the plural form of “zero”

Learn English – Number agreement when using “(s)” for optional plural

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