46

When posting a comment, the character count shows "n characters left", until you hit 1 character remaining - at which point, it switches to the singular. Fair enough.

But is 0 singular? Are negative numbers? Both use the singular phrasing, instead of plural. This is kind of a discussion point; personally, I'd have plural for any value except for "1 character", but I don't know what you think...

(Admittedly, it's a pretty darn minor point - I don't know how often the 600 character cap is hit, but I can't imagine it happens all that often...)

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  • 22
    Oooooh, a fellow OCDer.
    – squillman
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:42
  • Voting this up because this kind of stuff drives me batty. >.>
    – Paul Schifferer
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 5:36
  • 2
    A great opportunity to promote english.stackexchange.com
    – ЯegDwight
    Commented Sep 16, 2010 at 0:06
  • It depends if its -∞ or -∞s...
    – Question-Failed
    Commented Sep 17, 2010 at 10:06

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
13

I respectfully refer you here

New users can't create new tags: show a singular or plural message?

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1
  • Hey! I didn't tag it as 'bug'! I tagged it as 'possible bug'! There's a difference! ;)
    – Margaret
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 7:12
17

It is 1 character and -1 character.

It is characters for everything else, including 0 characters.

This is apparently how English "grammar" defines it.

The best explanation of this is at: Good question: are fractions and decimals singular or plural?

Note this is not necessarily true in other languages.

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  • 12
    For some reason -1 being plural just makes more sense to me :(
    – Ian Elliott
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:57
  • 1
    -1 being plural is the mathematical definition, but not the grammatical definition. Being programmers, we all tend to sway to the mathematical.
    – lkessler
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 3:07
  • 2
    weird, i've never heard of -1 being singular. I would always say "negative one characters"
    – Kip
    Commented Nov 28, 2009 at 17:43
  • 2
    Is -1 singular or plural? on English.SE. (Disclosure: I have an answer there preferring -1 being plural. :p)
    – ShreevatsaR
    Commented Jan 28, 2011 at 3:50
5

Time for some Math.abs()!

Clarity:

var plurality = (Math.abs(-8) == 1) ? "character" : "characters" ;
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  • 1
    I don't get it.
    – TheTXI Mod
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:54
  • Too esoteric? :) Just a suggestion to find the absolute value, and base plurality off of it.
    – Sampson
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:55
  • Starts to make sense now, but it didn't with revisions 1-5
    – Ian Elliott
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:58
  • Yeah; it was working inside my head...not as clearly when I put it out on the intarwebs.
    – Sampson
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:59
1

Yes, it's a very minor point. We should just make it "character(s) left" so we don't have to worry about figuring out when to start switching up the plurality.

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  • 20
    No! We should do it correctly. Speaking as a pedant, I am furious about this. I never noticed it before, but since it's been pointed out, I'll never be able to ignore it.
    – Hilarious Comedy Pesto
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:47
  • 2
    Kind of silly that they even implemented this feature in the first place since it only works if the value is 1. Waste of time ftw.
    – Ian Elliott
    Commented Aug 20, 2009 at 2:49
0

It now says "-8 characters left".

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1
  • 6
    This post has -1 votes.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Commented Jul 2, 2012 at 23:21

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