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This being a site about English language, we should be well-equipped to decide about something like this, eh? :)

Should we prefer singular or plural in tags, in cases where both would make sense?

For example:

As of September 5th, 2010, the usage is mixed (unsurprisingly).

On the more popular SE sites this is a well-known issue.

Edit: Obviously certain tags (e.g. , , , , , , etc.) should be in singular in any case, as plural just wouldn't make much sense—this question is not about such tags.

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    I just wanted to register my opinion of “I don’t give a damn, but please feel free to hash this out”
    – nohat
    Commented Sep 5, 2010 at 17:06
  • If you don't care about it then you can either upvote both answers (to get it over with as soon as possible) or downvote both answers (to give more people a chance to vote) or not vote on either.
    – delete
    Commented Sep 5, 2010 at 18:16
  • @Shinto, @nohat: We don't seem to be getting many more votes (either way)... How about just declaring plural the winner, and starting to do some batch retagging accordingly?
    – Jonik
    Commented Sep 11, 2010 at 0:54

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Plural

(verbs, nouns, synonyms)

Putting plural here as an answer for people to vote on.

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    It seems more natural for me using the plural, on the tags used as example. Wikipedia category names usually use the plural (programming languages, programming languages created in 1990, Gabonese composers, Oakland Athletics seasons, etc). In some cases, it makes more sense to use the singular: syntax versus syntaxes, style versus styles, etc.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Sep 4, 2010 at 15:37
  • If this is decided, someone who has the rep should merge the indefinite-article tag into indefinite-articles (both are currently in use)
    – keithjgrant
    Commented Sep 22, 2010 at 23:40
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    @keithjgrant: "definite article" and "indefinite article" seem like special cases to me. English only has one of each (unless you count "some" as an article, which I don't think most do) so the singular makes more sense to me.
    – herisson
    Commented Aug 4, 2015 at 5:38
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Singular

(verb, noun, synonym)

I prefer the singular, and support retagging to make things consistent.

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    I support singular, because its an obvious problem with two equally good solutions, and this was the first one.
    – Vincent McNabb
    Commented Aug 13, 2010 at 5:51
  • Right; since there's some support and no opposing views (personally I might have chosen plural but don't really care either way), I'll mark this as accepted (for now at least), and start retagging accordingly.
    – Jonik
    Commented Aug 18, 2010 at 22:45
  • Removed the accepted status of this for now, as plural seems to have gained support. (Though maybe it's just because the large font in the other answer better attracts upvoters... :)
    – Jonik
    Commented Aug 26, 2010 at 14:41

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