• From: Jeff Lowery <jlowery@s...>
• To: 'John Cowan' <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 14:47:47 -0700

Well, if "doh" can make it in the Oxford Dictionary, certainly "schemas"
can. 

What is the plural of doh, anyway? Dohata? Rhymes with 'Murata'... hey! a
'ta' singular! Or is that the family name? I can never remember...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@r...]
> Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 2:29 PM
> To: Tim Bray
> Cc: XML DEV
> Subject: Re: [OT] The stigma of schema
> 
> 
> Tim Bray wrote:
> 
> > All the
> > best [English] dictionaries recognize that their role is 
> *descriptive* -
> > describing what the language is - rather than *prescriptive* - 
> > trying to prescribe rules for what the language should be.
> 
> 
> Hence the Hartree-Fock evolution that I mentioned.  Publishers
> use dictionaries to decide on usage questions; dictionaries
> generate their information by summarizing the practices of
> earlier (generations of) publishers.  Neither one is
> authoritative by itself.  Clearly this process
> is circular, but in fact it does converge, with a small
> number of exceptions.
> 
> 
> > Lots of educated, articulate people find it natural to
> > use "schemas" in both written and spoken discourse.  Thus it
> > is incontrovertibly a part of both the written and spoken 
> > English language.  So is "schemata".  It is useful for the 
> > community that discusses schemas to settle on one of these
> > forms merely as a matter of conventional convenience. -T
> 
> 
> As a result of which, future dictionaries will doubtless
> include "schemas" as a variant plural, and (if the weight
> of usage grows) eventually the preferred plural, at least
> in computing.  We do have plurals differentiated by
> profession already:  biologists say "antennae", radio
> engineers speak of "antennas".
> 
> -- 
> There is / one art             || John Cowan 
> <jcowan@r...>
> no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
> to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein
> 
> 
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