http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Microscopy-or-Microscopies-tp7579142p7579146.html
but PubMed expands unquoted items). For comparison, pcr (no quotes) has
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> Hi Tobias and Raghu,
> Thank you Tobias for a very eloquent and thought provoking discussion on the wonderfully diverse grammar rules in the English language.
>
> Upon reading Raghu's original post, I thought "microscopies" sounded better (whether it was grammatically correct or not). Now I'm not sure having read Tobias's post. I suppose, if you consider microscopy as a technique, then we could have multiple microscopy techniques (and the abstraction becomes concrete). Hence, maybe "microscopies" is valid and could be considered grammatically correct.
>
> I think, ultimately, you are the author and how you word the title is up to you (providing you don't break major grammatical rules and you can convince the editor why you chose the wording you did). Reviewers aren't always right.
>
> Good luck with your manuscript.
> Paul
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Tobias Baskin
> Sent: Tuesday, 9 October 2012 6:14 AM
> To:
[hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Microscopy or Microscopies
>
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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/>>
>
>