Bob Walkden wrote:
> Personally I think the plural should be LXs - not LXes or LX's
Elsewhere I commented that "LXes" looks wrong to me and
"LXen" doesn't. Figured I should amend that to say that
"LXs" also doesn't look wrong to me, for the same reason
you gave (that "LX", whether it is one or not, _looks_
like an abbreviation).
> Misguided
> people who think the plural of 'index' is 'indices' might prefer to call
> their LXs 'Lices'.
"Misguided"? "Indices" *is* correct for more than one index.
(So is "indexes".) My _Webster's_ doesn't distinguish between
the two, but I've noticed that there does seem to be some
gradual divergence of the two, at least in the US, where in
some contexts (multiple look-things-up tables in a book)
"indices" sounds old and stuffy, but in others (multiple
statistical indicators) "indexes" sounds wrong. I don't
think usage has diverged quite far enough for either of
those to _be_ wrong, but I get the impression that there's
a slow movement in that direction.
-- Glenn
PS: For real fun, there's the problem of what to say when
you have more than one mongoose. "Mongeese" is tempting,
but so is "polygoose". :-P
