Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:53:14 -0500 From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> To: Chern Lee <chern@meow.osd.bsdi.com>, <freebsd-doc@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Unix Plural Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010716215314.0087cad0@mail85.pair.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0107161828020.74233-100000@meow.osd.bsdi.com >
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At 18:30 2001-07-16 -0700, Chern Lee wrote: >Officially, what should it be? I changed "UNIX's" to Unixes today, >I've seen Unixes at least one other place in the Handbook. Common English >sense has me saying "Unices" (ie: Indices, and the like). Index is a Latin word. Its genitive (in Latin) is indicis. Its word stem is "indic" as can also be seen in such words as "indicative". No such thing can be said about Unix. It is an English word, despite it being inspired by the Latin "unus" (one). There is no such thing as "unicative" or whatever. Add to it that it really makes little sense to talk about a plural when it comes to Unix. If anything, you can talk of "Unix systems", or "versions of Unix", or "Unix clones", or "implementations of Unix", and such. IMHO, you should try to find an expression like these rather than using a plural form of Unix. But, if all else fails, go with Unixes, the proper English plural of an English word ending in 'x'. However, if we start writing about Unixes instead of varieties of Unix, we may as well start using "can't", "won't", and "it's". We may also be infringing on a trademark. Cheers, Adam --- http://phonecowboy.com/registrar/twist/ finds a good domain for you and checks for its existence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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