That would be a negatory. The silly but accurate Y rule from second grade or so still applies: When a word ends in a consonant and -Y, drop the -Y and add -IES. When it ends in a vowel and -Y, just add -S.
Using the British form for half the set of homonyms that most beautifully illustrate this: “Detective stories often have criminal types skulking around upper storeys.”
Kind of like “kinda” does.
Then you just haven’t looked. Try plugging “attorney generals” into Google News.
Here are the first few hits.
http://www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=7620629&nav=MXEFM7m7
http://www.bdtonline.com/editorials/local_story_014171213.html
http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2008-01-14-voa3.cfm
Here’s one from Canada.
http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=117&cat=23&id=1136911&more=0
Attorney generals is not the default, but it is increasingly common in journalism and in all other non-academic or formal writing.
“Increasingly common” is somewhat different from “the modern standard.”
That’s true. However, nobody in this thread, certainly not me, ever said that it was “the modern standard.” I said it was correct in modern writing, which is not at all the same thing.
Find a new strawman. Better yet, don’t put words into my mouth and then berate me for them.
You wrote above, “Attorneys general is the old standard.” A logical inference is that you are saying “attorney generals” is the new standard.
I’m a bit puzzled as how anyone can authoritatively say that one is more formal, or by inference, more proper, than the other when all the dictionaries I’ve looked at list “attorney generals” and “attorneys general” as equally proper plurals.
In fact, I haven’t even found a usage note illuminating any difference between the two.
I think any opinions about which is modern and which is old or which is right for publishing or whatever are simple reflections of an individual’s preference, and nothing to do with correctness. Use either one you please, but there’s nothing wrong with using the other.
“Attorney General” is an example of a postpositive adjective. Postpositive adjectives follow the nouns they modify in accordance with Romance syntax rather than Germanic syntax that English normally follows. They’re usually found in English as a remnant of Norman French influence during the Middle Ages, especially right after the Norman Conquest.
French legal phrases, syntax and all, were adopted into English unchanged, even though in English adjectives almost always precede the nouns they modify. A few examples of legal phrases with postpositive adjectives: accounts payable, accounts receiveable, attorney general, condition precedent, condition subsequent, easement appurtenant, fee simple, president-elect, court martial, queen regnant, heir apparent, body politic, sum total, notary public.
Source: Bryan E. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 424-425 (1987).
Since the noun precedes the adjective describing it, the prescriptivist answer is that it’s the thing being pluralized, e.g. notaries public, courts martial, attorneys general.
FWIW, the Associate Press Stylebook (the bible of newspaper style guides) only allows for “attorneys general.”
As Walloon said, it was a logical conclusion based on what you had said. I’m not sure where this “berating” comes in, but accusations of strawmanism and putting words in mouths seem to be closer to berating than anything I said.
The first cite I quoted was from the Associated Press.
Are either of you really trying to argue that there is one standard and that no other usage therefore can be correct? If so, thank you for the gift. I love it when people try to proffer arguments that have no basis in reality.
If not, and it seems impossible that anyone could argue such nonsense, don’t try to pretend that I ever said there was an equivalency between a new correct usage and a new modern standard. I never said it, no matter what words you try to put into my mouth. Keep your absurd arguments to yourselves.
Just to remind you of the difference between what I said and your fanciful interpretations of it, here it is one more time.
It is correct to use attorney generals in everyday writing. It is done by good writers and journalists.
For formal writing, the standard is attorneys general, as preserved in The National Association of Attorneys General.
Any inference from those statements that a new standard has yet been accepted is illogical in the extreme.
No.
I think you’re getting unnecessarily exercised. This is a discussion, after all.
True, and they also agree in number–so why isn’t it “attorneys generals?”
Good question, I guess this phrase and the other ones described by pravnik were adapted to English even though they were borrowed almost unchanged from French.
Because the English borrowed the words, but not the rest of the rules of French grammar. That’s not unusual in such a jackdaw language as English - “oooh - shiny”.
Vocabulary is relatively easy to borrow, but rules of grammar aren’t.
Which proves exactly nothing other than a mistake got by an editor or WBOC editors changed the story to fit their style.
Associated Press Style is unambiguously “attorneys general”. I have the stylebook in front of me. If that’s not enough, go to the AP website itself, search for “attorneys general” and “attorney generals” and see how many hits you get.
Just to be clear, I am not arguing this. What I am saying is that in formal usage that is guided by a clear stylebook for purposes of consistency, there may be stylistically correct and incorrect usages. For newspapers that follow Associated Press style, an editor should change “attorney generals” to “attorneys general,” as that is the style of that medium.
Yup: Surgeon General. There’s only one at a time but, when discussing the history of the office, one refers to Surgeons General.
Because even though the word order retains the French form, they’re still English words, and English adjectives don’t reflect number.