Plural vs singular in titles

[Jasondeb...@gmail.com]

Dear Honyakkers

Do you know if there is a rule about using singular or plural in
titles?

For example, in a list of foodstuffs, you might have:

Vegetables
Cabbages, lettuces, carrots

Snacks
Peanuts, marshmallows

Soft drinks
Pepsi

Should it be "Soft drink" since there is only one item in that
category, or should be "Soft drinks" as a kind of general heading? Is
there a rule about this in Chicago or somewhere?

Thanks for any input.

Jason de Bonneville

jasondeb...@gmail.com

[Michael Hendry]

From: <Jasondeb...@gmail.com>

> Soft drinks
> Pepsi

I don't know about The Chicago Manual of Style, but this is the style I
always use. As you say, "soft drinks" is a heading. It might only have one
entry below it, but making the heading singular to match the number of
entries below it seems counter-intuitive. The category is "all types of
softdrinks" like another category is "all types of vegetables." I also use a
plural heading when there are no entries.

Michael Hendry, in Newcastle Australia

[Mari Hodges]

It sounds more natural to make it plural, and besides, more can be added in
the future.

Mari Hodges

[Anthony Bryant]

On Jun 5, 2007, at 10:36 PM, Jasondeb...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> Dear Honyakkers
>
> Do you know if there is a rule about using singular or plural in
> titles?
>
> For example, in a list of foodstuffs, you might have:
>
>
> Vegetables
> Cabbages, lettuces, carrots
>
> Snacks
> Peanuts, marshmallows
>
> Soft drinks
> Pepsi
>

I would put Pepsi as a singular.

For the record, cabbage and lettuce also is singular (unless you're
talking about different TYPES of cabbage and lettuce).

Tony

[Matthew Fitsko]

I generally agree with Mari and Michael about uniformly using plural
in titles, *except* if they are categories of information for a table
with a list of individual entries.
I'm not sure if that's clear, so for example imagine an inventory list
for a supermarket like so:

Vegetable SKU Best-by date Price
---------------------------------------------------------------
Cabbage 1001 06/01 $1.29
Lettuce 1002 06/03 $.89
Carrots 1003 06/07 $1.49

Using plural in the column headings, i.e., "Vegetables", "SKUs", "Best-
by dates", "Prices", would look odd. I'm not quite sure why, but
possibly it's because in a table like this you're thinking in terms of
single entries.

In other words, if the individual list entries are also correlated
with entries in other lists (basically a table), singular is better.

Matthew Fitsko

PS - Ditto what Anthony said about the plural of cabbage/lettuce.

[Robert Jones III]

> Is there a rule about this in Chicago or somewhere?

I have Chicago here at my desk and a quick scan reveals that Chicago
itself uses plurals in all the titles. I'm terrible at finding
specific rules in Chicago so I'm afraid I can't give you any better
"evidence."

> PS - Ditto what Anthony said about the plural of cabbage/lettuce.

Cabbage and lettuce were just examples.

[Jasondeb...@gmail.com]

Many thanks to all respondents.
I continued my search on the Internet, and I found this example:

http://www.babcockbrowncapital.com/media/166376/04%2009%2006%20bcm%202006%20full%20year%20result.pdf

On page 37, there is a section

18) Key Management Personnel Disclosures

(i) Chairman - Non-executive
Robert Champion de Cresigny AC

That looks fine to me, with "Chairman" obviously in the singular. But
at the same time, I don't think it would look odd if it were "Chairmen
- Non-executive" and then went on to list one person.
Any thoughts?