• Laser@feddit.org
      1·
      16 days ago

      This is always weird with pluralization of words ending in a long O, I remember a similar discussion how to do it for “Touch and Go”.

      “Touch and Gos” makes the O short, “Touch and Goes” is also wrong - I think we settled on "Touch and Go"s (I’m not a native speaker but we had one on the group) - I guess the authors here had a similar issue here and decided for this. Also this might be interpreted like in “we’re eating at McDonald’s” this is speculation

      • Wiz@midwest.social
        2·
        15 days ago

        Native English speaker here, and I graduated with an English writing degree, so I’m a word nerd. Pluralization and apostrophe use is baffling in English, and even native English speakers frequently get it wrong. I’ve found a good general guide for apostrophe use here.

        McDonald’s is a brand name, so “We’re eating at McDonald’s” is proper. “Dingo” is also a brand name, used by OJ in the first speech bubble. Its plural would be “DINGOS”. It would be like Stetson hats, which we could say that “We are wearing Stetsons.”

        Touch-and-go being a noun seems like a strange side case, but I found it in some dictionaries as airplane jargon. As such, I think it being hyphenated as “touch-and-goes” or “touch-and-gos” would be fine.

        I think it’s more likely that this is a phrase that should be reworded to be more clear. “Touch and go” seems like a phrase which could be made into a compound adjective if preceding the noun.

        We survived several touch-and-go situations. – Use of a hyphenated compound adjective before a noun.

        The landings were touch and go. – However, when separated from the noun after the verb, no hyphens.

        I think rewording to avoid the weirdness is the best solution to make the writing clear. However if you encounter something like this in the future and get it wrong, don’t worry too much. You’re in good company. Native English speakers and writers get these rules wrong all the time, and the standard rules from experts have evolved over my lifetime.

        • Laser@feddit.org
          1·
          15 days ago

          Touch-and-go

          It was about 7 years ago and I don’t remember the hyphenation exactly, I just spotted the use of “goes” and suspected it to be… non-ideal. Not sure “Situations” would have been too helpful; considering the context, in retrospective I think “Events” might have been better as you were supposed to enter the number of times it occurred… and I’d argue a situation can include multiple events (or occurrences?).

          This was during development of a system used in aviation that needed these numbers to calculate maintenance intervals. So not exactly something most people get in contact with.

          For clarification, this is when the aircraft already has wheels on the runway during landing (touch) and the pilot decides he won’t be able to make a stop until the end of the runway safely and takes off again (go)