Posted by
Tobias Baskin on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Microscopy-or-Microscopies-tp7579142p7579144.html
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Raghu,
That is an interesting question. And to be sure, no answer
here can be as a result of a derivation. Here is my take on the
situation and forgive me but the following is rambling. It comes to
the point eventually! I don't know how to say this in a more compact
way, sorry.
It is useful to distinguish countable and uncountable
nouns. A countable noun refers to a concrete thing, for example a
'dog' or a 'pencil'. These take plurals happily. But an uncountable
noun refers to an abstract category or concept, not a real thing,
like 'knowledge' or 'magnesium'. As an abstraction, it doesn't make
sense to pluralize them. What woud you mean by 'magnesiums'? As a
rule, I would say that it is preferable to keep a category/abstract
noun singular, unless there is some good reason not to. For example,
maybe if you were talking about the product of different mines you
might compare say South African and Venezualan 'magnesiums'. But when
you do that, what I think you are doing in fact is to treat these
magnesiums as things (ie, output of specific mines).
Note that you can also turn a countable noun into an
abstraction ('the domestic dog') but that is a different story.
Added to this mix is my sense that different abstract nouns
are more or less 'resistant' to taking the plural. So for example, I
don't think I have ever seen 'knowledges' whereas 'philosophies' is
not so rare. Perhaps this has to do with the ease with which we can
think of say Plato's and Kant's philosophy as wholly different things
compared to Plato's and Kant's knowledge (which are different flavors
of a single thing). I am not sure. It strikes me that 'microscopy' is
rather closer to knowledge than philosphy in being plural averse.
Note that 'microscopy' leads 'microscopies' by more than 100 times on
Google.
Coming back to your title, all things being equal, I agree
with your reviewer. But if you do want to emphasize the difference in
the methods, you could write: "..using confocal and light sheet
fluorescence microscopes". A microscope is a good old countable noun
and takes the plural with ease.
Good luck with your revisions.
Tobias
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>
>It's a bit strange to send a grammar question to this email list,
>but since it deals with microscopy and has perhaps come up in other
>contexts, I thought someone reading may have insights. We've
>written a paper whose title contains the phrase '[...] using
>confocal and light sheet fluorescence microscopies' (i.e. in which
>we use both confocal microscopy and light sheet fluorescence
>microscopy to image things). A reviewer suggests replacing
>"microscopies" with "microscopy." I think "microscopies" sounds
>better, but as a counter-point, I would think "... comparing
>left-handed and right-handed calligraphy" would sound better than
>"calligraphies" if I were writing about handwriting. Thoughts?
>(Sorry for stretching the boundaries of the confocal list -
>hopefully it's not too annoying!)
>
>Thanks,
>
>Raghu
>
>--
>Raghuveer Parthasarathy
>
[hidden email]
>
>
>Associate Professor
>Department of Physics
>1274 University of Oregon
>Eugene, OR 97403-1274
>
http://physics.uoregon.edu/~raghu/--
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