Re: Grammaticaly correct sentences (or not...)

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:45:50 +0000, sprocket <jas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Paul wrote:

I remember reading a language column by William Sapphire in an Indian
magazine a few years ago where he had ruthlessly and meticulously set
out to decimate all existing grammar softwares...

I suspect it was William Safire. Look up 'decimate', I don't think you
meant what it means. 'Software' doesn't have a plural; you can use the
circumlocution 'software packages' though.

I sympathise JS, but in some parts of the world and in some
fields of activity "software" does indeed have the plural
"softwares" meaning "software packages" or "item of software".

The singular "a software" is also used.

Googling for "a software for" gives 102,000 results. The
examples below are of formal rather than casual use of "a
software":

WGAViewer: A Software for Genomic Annotation of Whole Genome
Association Studies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18256235
The authors are at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina,
USA.

Getting Pajek: A software for large network analysis
http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/publications/snacourse/pajek.html
The creator of the software appears to be Vladimir Batagelj
of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

NET-SYNTHESIS: a software for synthesis, inference and ...

http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/24/2/293
The authors of the article are all at US universities.

Climatica : a software for the climatic information
management
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EMS05/00365/EMS05-A-00365.pdf
cosis.net - Copernicus Online Service + Information System
Providing Public Information and Services for registered
Individuals and Organizations affiliated with Solar, Earth,
Planetary and Space Sciences; Astrophysics, Microgravity and
Life Sciences; or Radio Sciences.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in uk.culture.language.english)
.