Q. Hi CMOS, I have a (possibly silly) question. Would the phrase “dogs have a tail” be considered grammatically correct? My instinct is that it should be “dogs have tails,” with both nouns plural. On the other hand, there are some contexts where “dogs have a tail” sounds fine, at least to my ear. For example, if someone asked you what the difference is between dogs and frogs, you might say, “for one thing, dogs have a tail.” Is this a quirk of spoken English vs. written English? This is a trivial example, but this issue comes up a lot in the scientific writing I edit. If it’s purely a personal style choice, I’d prefer to stick with the authors’ original wording. Wordings? Thanks!
A. Though some dogs can be silly, your question isn’t silly at all. One problem is that either statement—dogs have a tail and dogs have tails—could be ambiguous if taken literally. The first could mean that dogs as a group share one tail, and the second could mean that dogs each have more than one tail.
But it’s common knowledge that the animal known as a dog normally has only one tail, so you can follow your instincts (which are correct in this case, grammatically speaking) and match plural subject with plural object: dogs have tails. Use a singular object only when the plural might be misunderstood (unlikely with dogs and tails), or when the fact that the object is singular is the point—as in most dogs have only one tail.
This advice applies equally to writing and speaking, but you’re probably right to suggest that a singular object would be more common in speech than in edited prose. For more on this type of construction, known as the distributive possessive, see CMOS 5.25.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Which is preferred, (n + 1)st or (n + 1)th?
A. An argument can be made for either, and they are both relatively common, as this extensive thread at Stack Exchange’s English Language & Usage forum suggests. If you need a source to back up one choice or the other, a user named Mitch found one: Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences, by Nicholas J. Higham (2nd ed., Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1998).
Higham’s book says that the ordinal suffix depends on the number rather than on the variable—as in (k + 1)st, (k + 2)nd, (k + 3)rd, (k + 4)th, and so on (see section 5.5, p. 63). Any variable alone would use th (kth), because k is equivalent to (k + 0), and the ordinal for zero is zeroth.
As that same Stack Exchange thread points out, some sources use a hyphen before the ordinal ending: (k + 1)-st. The thread also suggests that a preference for th treats k + 1 as a variation on kth, whereas st favors pronunciation (as in “kay plus first”).
Or see the Encyclopedia of Mathematics (European Mathematical Society, 2002), available online at https://encyclopediaofmath.org/. Usage there varies, from (n + 1)th (under “Markov braid theorem”) and (n − 1)-th (“Fredholm equation”) to (n + 1)st (“Zipf law”) and (n − 1)-st (“Weyl method”). (Other variables, including k, follow a similar pattern.) But the st variations (with or without a hyphen) seem to be more common than the ones with th, lending support to Higham’s recommendation.
Verdict? (n + 1)st, barring a strong author or publisher preference for th.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Should the indefinite article “a” be used when introducing a professor emeritus? For example, “He is [a] professor emeritus of chemistry at the university.” On the one hand, “a” usually indicates that the person is not the only person with that title at the university. On the other hand, Google Ngram shows a higher preference for no article.
A. We agree that adding “a” could make sense if there’s more than one such professor at the university in question. But whether there’s one or eleven, omitting the article makes “professor emeritus” sound more like a professional title than a job description. That is, it sounds fancier.
This may explain why it would be relatively rare to refer to someone as “teacher of” chemistry or another subject (without “a”), whereas calling someone “professor of”—even without “emeritus”—is fairly common (“She is professor of chemistry at . . .”). The word professor enjoys a status that teacher does not.
In other words, there’s no definitive answer to your question. Though adding an “a” or an “an” can work well before a title held by more than one person, omitting the article before “professor” and variations of that term even when there’s more than one can be an equally good choice, one that follows an unstated convention in academia.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I have scoured the internet looking for an answer: How are plurale tantum [plural only] words like “pants,” “scissors,” “sunglasses,” and “manners” constructed using the suffix “-less”? Would it be “pantless” or “pantsless,” “scissorless” or “scissorsless,” and so on? I can find arguments for either construction for each term. I’m hoping there’s a grammar rule (somewhere) that will guide me toward a definitive answer. If the “s” is retained before the suffix, most words become awkward to say the least (“trousersless,” “slacksless,” “shearsless,” etc.). Is it simply arbitrary? Based on popular usage? Something else?
A. We can’t cite a rule, but we know that the suffix “-less” almost always gets added to the singular form of a noun. And we could guess that this fact would influence how “-less” might be added to a word like “pants.”
In other words, if “shoeless” (no shoes), “witless” (no wits), “childless” (no children), and “toothless” (no teeth) are all standard, then “pantless” (no pants) would seem like a reasonable option. And that’s what the OED has (“pantless,” not “pantsless”).
But compared with the standard singular forms “shoe,” “wit,” and so on, “pant” as a singular noun is kind of rare. You might consider ignoring the OED in this case and going with “pantsless” instead.
Some of the other words you mention may work better without the “s.” “Scissorless” and “trouserless” seem OK, maybe because the adjectives of those words are commonly spelled without an “s,” as in scissor kick* and trouser pocket (the adjective form of “pants” more often retains the “s”: pants pocket). And “mannerless” is in Merriam-Webster and the OED.
“Sunglassless” and “sunglassesless,” however, both look like mistakes, and “slack(s)less” and “shear(s)less” also have problems (starting with the fact that slack and shear have multiple meanings). Rewriting would be best (e.g., without sunglasses, slacks, or shears). Or try a hyphen (e.g., “sunglasses-less”).
In sum, approach these terms on a case-by-case basis, and don’t settle for an awkward or ambiguous result.
* Merriam-Webster records only “scissors kick” (as of October 2024), but that spelling has become less common than “scissor kick” in published books in recent years, as this n-gram from Google suggests.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Several years ago, radio station WBUR in Boston began crediting its listeners with the words “brought to you by the listeners OF WBUR.” I have found it most disturbing and would appreciate it if CMOS were to dive into this controversy. Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs does not address this since the example is of a noun form of a verb. Thank you.
A. Whereas it’s true that we listen to something, never of, that doesn’t mean we can’t be listeners of whatever it is we’re listening to. The form “listeners to” might even be an example of hypercorrection—that is, a pairing of “to” with “listeners” may stem from a mistaken idea that a noun must be used in the same way as any corresponding verb. The phrase “listeners of WBUR” simply means “WBUR’s listeners” (see CMOS 5.23).
That said, both pairings are common (as this n-gram from Google Books suggests), and we’d be inclined to accept either one. In WBUR’s defense, however, that of in the example you quote is arguably the better choice; “brought to you by the listeners to WBUR” might be misheard, however fleetingly, as meaning that listeners are bringing something to WBUR. They are, but that’s not the intended meaning of those words.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. CMOS 5.201 says that “compare with” should be used for literal comparisons and “compare to” for poetic or metaphorical comparisons. Does the same rule apply to “comparable”? My organization enforces “comparable with” because we follow CMOS and publish material that’s not remotely poetic. “With” sounds odd to me, though; Google Books Ngram shows that “comparable to” is used more than six times as often, and it’s been the more popular variant for almost 100 years [that’s true when British English is considered together with American English; in British English, “comparable with” was the more popular form until the mid-1970s.—CMOS editor]. Can I make a case for sticking with “comparable to”?
A. Yes, you can pair “comparable” with “to” rather than “with.” First, note that “compare” is included not only in the list at paragraph 5.201 (which covers words and the prepositions they’re paired with); it’s also covered in the usage glossary under CMOS 5.254, which has this to say: “To compare with is to discern both similarities and differences between things. To compare to is to liken things or to note primarily similarities between them, especially in the active voice.” The example often cited as evidence of the latter is a line from Shakespeare: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (Sonnet 18).
But “comparable” generally means “similar,” and it’s not a verb (so it can’t be said to be in the active voice). Even when it means “capable of or suitable for comparison” (the older sense of the word, as recorded in Merriam-Webster), it still carries the sense of likeness. True, there was a clear preference for most of the twentieth century in British English for the phrase “is not comparable with” (for things that are not alike), but for whatever reason (maybe that wording is too far removed from Shakespeare?), that’s not the case anymore.
[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. We are naming a maths series for classes 1 to 8 as ‘Revel in Maths’. The sales team is a little hesitant to accept this name as they find the word ‘revel’ associated with drinking and dancing. The general dictionary meaning of the phrasal verb ‘revel in something’ is ‘to take a great pleasure in something’. Kindly suggest an alternative.
A. As copyeditors accustomed to American English, we’re reveling in your “maths”—and in your single quotation marks (and the placement of periods relative to those marks). Seriously, though, a bit of revelry in the context of maths (or math) seems harmless to us, and unlikely to add up to anything resembling a bacchanal. If you must choose a different word, how about “Maths Is Fun”? To ensure everyone has an equally good time, including students with more of an aptitude for verbal than mathematical subjects, you could take an interdisciplinary detour into subject-verb agreement.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. Is it alright to end a relative clause with a preposition, such as in the following: “The credit card you charge your rental fee to . . .”
A. Considering you’ve written alright rather than the standard all right, our answer would be yes (or yep). But seriously, even if you were to elevate your diction to a somewhat higher register of formality, the question you seek an answer to would still get a yes (and alright is all right with us outside formal, edited prose).
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. I was taught to exclusively use third person in academic writing, especially in research papers. Now that I’m in university, I have seen increasing use of first person in essays and papers. I couldn’t find anything on this in CMOS or on the website. Is there any sort of guideline on when to use different perspectives? Or does choosing first, second, and third person in writing have little impact as long as a sense of professionalism is maintained?
A. The ninth edition of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations—known as Turabian and intended as a CMOS for students—includes a section on first-person pronouns that begins as follows: “Almost everyone has heard the advice to avoid using I or we in academic writing. In fact, opinions differ on this point. Some teachers tell students never to use I, because it makes their writing ‘subjective.’ Others encourage using I as a way to make writing more lively and personal” (§ 11.1.7, p. 120).
Turabian then offers some guidelines: For example, try to avoid beginning your sentences with I believe or I think (which go without saying). And resist the temptation to provide a running commentary on your research (First I did this . . . Then I did this . . .). You should also avoid using the royal we to refer to yourself and the generic we to refer to people in general.
But the occasional use of first person—for example, to describe something that you in fact did or plan to do—can make writing sound less dogmatic. For more details (including why researchers avoid the first person to describe actions that must be replicated by other researchers), see § 11.1.7.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]
Q. How do you form a possessive of a “one of the” phrase? For example, a shout belonging to “one of the guards.” Placing the apostrophe at the end of “guards” seems to make multiple guards possess the shout. “Guard’s” seems to make it one of the shouts of a single guard. But if there are multiple guards, and one is shouting . . . where does the apostrophe go?
A. Our recommendation would be to rephrase to avoid the possessive—for example, by referring to “a shout from one of the guards.” Because you’re right, an apostrophe by itself won’t convey your intended meaning.
For example, you could write this: “One of the guards’ shouts could be heard above the din.” Restating that sentence reveals its meaning: “Of the guards’ shouts, one could be heard above the din.” There are multiple shouts from multiple guards (plural possessive), and one of these shouts in particular could be heard above the din—which is not, judging from your question, what you intend to say.
And you’re right about the version with apostrophe s, as in “one of the guard’s shouts.” As you say, that would suggest one shout from a single guard who is shouting—or maybe, depending on context, the shouts belonging to one of the guards. These are also not what you mean.
Again, rephrasing to avoid the possessive is your best bet. For a related scenario involving the phrase one of and verb agreement, see CMOS 5.62.
[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]