Erratae
Posted Feb 7, 2004 14:32 UTC (Sat) by
Duncan (guest, #6647)
In reply to:
Erratae by uwaucs
Parent article:
Significant change in Mandrake Linux Development Process
> Erratas signifies a collection of mere errata.
Exactly (or perhaps erratae as in the title?).
Altho (and yes, I'm deliberately using the "e-spelling" version), Mdk DID still
get it wrong as used.
As mentioned, "errata" is already plural. However, as commonly used within
the community, it refers to a (singular) list of multiple "erratum" as found in a
single release. Therefore, within context, "erratas" could be correctly used to
refer to multiple such lists, as when referring to the errata pages for multiple
serial releases, or for the errata pages for multiple products, as possible when
comparing multiple distributions.
Thus, the usage would be referring to a plural collection of singular lists of
"errata", the plural form of "erratum", since each list would potentially contain
multiple single-item error/notes, together with fixes/workarounds, if available.
I'd consider that usage correct. However, that's not how it was used in this
press release. How Mdk used it here is incorrect, as it still refers to only the
single "errata" list or list page, for a single release, not a collection of such
pages, covering multiple releases or across multiple products or distributions.
Thus, they are only referring to a single "errata" list, and "errata" remains the
correct term, with the sort of super-plural term they used therefore incorrect.
Compare usage to multiple "classes" of students, with each "class" being both
plural and singular in that it refers to a single group of individuals. So, I'd
say, with erratas/errata/erratum, tho (e-spelling again) here, its the same root
at all three levels, instead of having a different root for the "list" and
"accoumlation of lists" level.
Of course, lists/list/list-item is the same sort of thing..
Duncan
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