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Write 'em? Hell, most people don’t even read them. You can pluralize “mouse” as “sabre-toothed platypi” for all the rest of the world will ever know. We’ll all just sail on in blissful ignorance, calling them “mices” and annoying your support department.
I will never use “mouse device,” as it is too long and I’m lazy. I will not use “mouses” because it wasn’t a word before they came along, whereas “mice” was. One syllable, easy to understand, doesn’t sound ignorant (mouses?), so I’ll stick with “mice.”
BTW, I’ve never seen the word “realtime” in print. As a matter of fact, the dictionaries I consulted didn’t have it at all. They referred me to “real-time,” the way I’ve always seen it. I do agree, however, that it should only be used as an adjective. You can’t do something in real-time.
And the plural of “touchpad” is “maddeningly twitchy poorly-conceived fingertip-operated devices.” Argh.
The jury’s out on the adjective form of “real-time” or “realtime.” I’m not surprised you’ve never seen it in print, but in our documentation, “realtime” is an adjective. (E.g. “realtime editing.”)
I happen to know that Apple and other companies use the hyphenated form “real-time,” which would be acceptable, given it’s a compound adjective.
However, one cannot “edit in real-time.” In this case “real” qualifies “time.” Just how “mouse” qualifies “devices.” (But that’s been beaten into the ground in this thread, in spite of both the Apple and Microsoft Style Guides, so let’s forget it, already. Ugh. :rolleyes:
Which we have already covered that they do not have the right to say which is correct, as they did not event mice. The inventer of the mouse, calls more than one of them mice…He invented it, so he gets to say…Microsoft and Apple are wrong.
Right or wrong (look, I think “mouse devices” is annoying as well), there are usage standards that exist and that I have to follow as a professional technical writer in the high-tech industry. I’ve only ever had to use the term “mouse devices” once, when documenting Macintosh mouse devices having one button as opposed to PC/Microsoft MICE having two. It comes up rarely.
I don’t care what you call them. I just have to do my job and do it well, thank-you-very-much.
having two. It comes up rarely.
