| QUESTION |
| What is the plural of chef? When we look it up in our dictionaries it doesn't give a plural. I'm pretty sure it's "chefs," but I want to explain what rule it follows. (If it even follows a rule.)
Thank you
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| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
Granger, Indiana  Mon, Nov 2, 1998
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| The plural of chef is chefs. Usually when a dictionary doesn't give a plural, that means either that it doesn't have one (but then the dictionary will say that it's a noun, singular, only) or that it's formed by the simplest rule in English: add an -s to form the plural. Even in French, this plural would be chefs.
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| QUESTION |
| What is the legally recommended technique for copyrighting a document, paper or presentation? What is the suggested copyright format? Should it appear on only the title page or on every page? etc.
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| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Baltimore, Maryland Tue, Nov 3, 1998
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
There's no reason even to note your copyright on the title page, much less on every page. If your manuscript is published, the publisher will take care of the business of copyrighting and you will be involved in the decision regarding who owns the copyright, etc. If you're talking about an unpublished manuscript, you should know what the APA Publication Manual has to say about this:
Authors are protected by federal statute against unauthorized use of their unpublished manuscripts. Under the Copyright Act of 1976 (title 17 of the United States Code), an unpublished work is copyrighted from the moment it is fixed in tangible form -- for example, typed on a page. Copyright protection is "an incident of the process of authorship." . . . Until the author formally transfers copyright, the author owns the copyright on an unpublished manuscript, and all exclusive rights due the owner of a published work are also due the author of an unpublished work. . . . The [copyright] notice need not appear on unpublished works."
Authority: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Assocation American Psychological Association. 4th ed. American Psychological Association: New York. 1994. p. 299.
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| QUESTION |
How do I explain the grammatical correctness of this sentence:-
She may have been being funny.
I am English and I find this sentence makes perfect sense, as does my lecturer. But my friend, who is from Finland, finds its difficult to accept that this sentence is grammatically correct.
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| SOURCE OF QUESTION & DATE OF RESPONSE |
| Watford, Hertfordshire, England Thu, Nov 5, 1998
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| GRAMMAR'S RESPONSE |
| Well, it does sound odd, and maybe there is something especially odd about it from the Finnish point of view, but it's no more weird than, "She may have been running backwards," is it? I think what you've got there is a conditional present perfect progressive. You don't run across kind of thing every day, especially in Finland, and it's just as well.
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