A letter home from daycare may be sensitive to the fact that some children have a single parent like this:     Dear Parent(s),   And if that same letter home wanted to be sensitive to the fact that I may have more than one child enrolled:     This letter is concerning your child(ren)...   But what if I have twin infants? (twinfants)     This letter is about your baby(ies)...   I believe the parentheses indicate that the letters within are optional, but do they also indicate that you should remove the y?  EDIT: The suggested duplicate has many suggestions, none of which is backed by a guideline or rule. Is there no rule governing this behavior?
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I guess “optional plural” is the correct term.  I’m referring to things like    It can be found at the following location(s). Please pick up your ticket(s).   But how do I do that to a word that ends in&nbsp;‑y? Take category for example: “category(s)” doesn’t seem correct, because categorys is a misspelling.  But everything else I have tried looks ridiculous.  What’s the correct approach here?
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Two letters need to be delivered to each of n houses. How many ways can a postman deliver two letters to each house such that each house receives at least one incorrect letter?    I got stuck and don't now how to progress. Can someone provide hint?   1) $(2n)!/2^n$ is the number of all possible onto functions from our domain of houses to the codomain of letters.  2) Let $A_i$ be property that two delivered letters are correct. $ |A_1'   \cup A_2'   \cup...  \cup A_n'|=(2n)!/2^n-|A_1   \cap A_2   \cap...  \cap A_n|$    I tried everything I could come up with but I cannot find $|A_1   \cap A_2   \cap...  \cap A_n|$. I feel like I need to find union first but in order to do that I should find intersection. Really confused. Any hint would be appreciated.   Edit: Corrected mistake in the equation.
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When adding possessive-S/apostrophe to a list, the rule is only the last person has the apostrophe if the item is shared, or everyone has one if they have the items each, e.g.  John and Mary's houses = the houses that belong jointly to John and Mary.  John's and Mary's houses = the houses that belong to John and Mary as individuals, at least one each.  However, I am curious if the rules are slightly different when possessive pronouns are used for a single item.  You and Mary's house OR your and Mary's house?  I'm even more unclear when the first person is involved.  Mary and my house OR Mary's and my house?  Finally, when there are at least three people, including the first person, does the last named person have the possessive-S/apostrophe, or all/none of them?   John, Mary and my house John, Mary's and my house John's, Mary's and my house   I'd be very grateful to anyone able to clarify this, ideally with a some form of reference, as I can't find it anywhere.    There have been several suggestions to use "our", yet if the text refers to a group of people, all of whom own co-own houses with some others within the group*, then the above style wording would be necessary, so my question stands.  * eg I own a house with John and Mary, I co-own another with Peter and yet another with Philip and Sarah.
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Is there something I can add to the preamble of my document such that multiple letters without spacing in a Math environment (such as $NP$) do not have extra spacing between them and are not considered multiple distinct variables? Right now, I have to use $\mathit{NP}$ to prevent any extra spacing, but I feel that it is more natural to add a space between the letters if they are a different variable ($N P$). For example, if I want the multi-letter variable NP, I want to be able to say $NP$ which would automatically be replaced by $\mathit{NP}$. If I want N and P to have the proper inter-variable spacing, I want to do that only when they are separated by a space, like so: $N P$. Is there a way to achieve this? Would it break something that I'm unaware of? Edit: Here's a screenshot that shows what I mean:  So basically, is it possible for line 1 to automatically give me line 3 and for line 2 to give me line 2?
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Could I get an example as to how these three elements (are these called metacharacters?) differ?  I know that * means all or nothing, but I am not sure if it's the right way to think about it. On the other hand . and ? seem the same. They match one character, right?
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I'm writing a letter to several recipients in the same document and want to address them correctly at the start.  Is the following correct (I suspect not) and if not, what should it be:     Dear Mr's Jones, Smith, Bloggs and Flintstone
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All my life, I have been confused with choosing plural or singular form to represent one-one correspondence notion.     Only those who qualify will be awarded a certificate.   or      Only those who qualify will be awarded certificates.   ?  Another example, let us consider the following:  "Each student gets one pencil". But it becomes ambiguous if I rewrite in plural form as "Students get pencils".  I hope someone can give me a general rule to overcome my confusion. :-)
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I want to write an email to 2 persons. Shall I say:     Dear Person1 and Person2,   Or      Dear Person1, Person2,
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This question is, honestly speaking, probably somewhat opinion-based, but I still want to give a shot.  A professor acceded to my invitation of writing a reference letter for me. Nevertheless, unlike the other professors who also acceded to write a reference letter for me, he asked me to draft it on my own. Originally I did not feel anything "wrong", and I just felt embarrassed to recommend myself. But yesterday a friend told me that a professor would ask you to write her reference letter for you when she does not actually think that you are "worthy" enough for her to write you one on her own.   What is the probability that such viewpoint is true? Any opinion is greatly appreciated!
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We have several questions on this site that deal with infants and toddlers who cry a lot, for various reasons.  Here is an  and , . The topic was raised  but no answer was provided. Perhaps we can find a good answer on our site here.  There are two basic approaches:   Leave the child completely alone until the crying stops. &lt;-- This is what I want to address. Leave the child for only a short moment and then return. Repeat with increasing absences.   Is it likely to harm an infant/a toddler to let him intensively cry until he stops on his own?  To elaborate, I have some additional questions:   At what lower age/development limit would the practice be acceptable, and why? What factors could help determine whether the practice would work on a specific child?   For the purpose of this topic, let me define "crying" as real, full-strength, all-out,  non-verbal mommy-daddy-come-help-me crying, not just whining or whimpering. Every parent knows his child and will recognize when the child really cries -- that is what I mean here.  Also, let me define "harmful" as not just transitory sadness but rather something where one could expect negative mid-to-long-term effects such as trauma, separation anxiety, lack/loss of trust in parents and others.  The crying could be related to bedtime/sleep but also during daytime when the parents aren't near.
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What is the correct rule for placement of a pair of parenthetical commas in a sentence? Let me explain the problem with the following example sentence wherein any person would find the people placing the parenthetical commas at two different places:   The CSI, in its email, has informed us that ...  The CSI has, in its email, informed  us that ...    Now, the question is: which of the two is correct? Or, better? Are they equally good? Can I write the sentence either way? I have googled the problem, but to no avail. Can anybody shed some light?
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My daughter's English text book has a note which reads if you are directly talking to a person about the only person in your house, it can be capitalized.   For example:     "Mommy, have you seen my tab?"  "What would I do with it? Ask your Sister. She's fond of playing on it"   I want to confirm the capitalization of 'sister' here. This is new to me, actually!   And yes, it has nothing to do with emphasizing 'sister' that many may think the reason of capitalizing. Say--     "Yes, last night I asked Mommy about it, but then she gave a reluctant smile!"
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When it comes to losing weight, a quick fix to would be nice, but we   know there’s no such [a] thing. ()   It sounds like there isn’t ‘a’ in the news. So I wonder if it be right when there is no ‘a’ after ‘such.’ Would it be okay?
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I notice that in some cases people skip the  's  in the possessive case. But I cannot understand what rule they use.  For example:   attribute declaration, but not attribute's declaration or declaration of attributes pet cemetery (name of the book), but not cemetery of pets.   Explain please how should I do it correctly?
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Frequently when I refer to or address a family, I do so by pluralizing their last name, e.g., The Smiths, or The Ramones. But suppose I want to address a family whose last name ends in a "y", e.g., Kennedy. Normally in English, I reflexively change the "y" to an "ies" when pluralizing words in this form, but as a proper noun, I'm not sure this is the right thing to do. On the other hand, The Kennedys doesn't seem right either--the "dys" looks like it would lead to a dysfunctional prononciation. I'm also pretty sure an apostrophe belongs nowhere near here.  So how do I properly pluralize a name ending in a "y"?
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Why is "letter" not plural in "two letter words"?  For me it's very strange as the equivalent in French would be plural but my English friend finds it totally normal.
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If you have two questions, one embedded in the other, should there be a single, final question mark covering both the main question and the nested one, or one for each?   Here is an example:     A) Does anyone know the answer (or can anyone explain?) if there should be one or two question marks in this sentence?   Here is another example just to clarify:     B) Does anyone know the answer (or does anyone not know?)?    I am mainly concerned with the embedded question coming at the end of sentence like this: ...(...?)?   That looks really odd to me. It doesn't seem right; however, I feel that it looks fine if I have the nested question in the middle of the sentence, i.e. of the form:     C) Does anyone know the answer (or does anyone not know?) to this question?   The punctuation in C looks correct to me, if I take the first question mark out then it looks looks wrong, but it seems that B and C are exactly, but for the position of the parentheses, the equivalent of each other.  P.S. One last point, are single and double quotation marks considered to be parentheses?