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grammaticality - When talking about many things that all have one thing, do you use the plural or singular?


If you have something like:



Get the name(s) of all users.



Should name be singular or plural?


The way I see it, each user has only one name, so it could be singular, but you will be getting many names, one for each users, so it could also be plural. Anyone know what is the proper way?



Answer



When used with the word all, the plural is preferred in order to match the plural users:



Get the names of all users.



With the word each, the singular is preferred in order to match the singular user:



Get the name of each user.



However, even in this latter case, some people would accept or prefer names. There is not a hard-and-fast rule in this case, though in general English speakers err on the side of using the plural.


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