Lords of Finance, which just won a Pulitzer, is Liaquat Ahamed's lucid exploration of the economic crises of the 1920s via a the multifaceted lens of four finance leaders of the four major world economies post–World War I. Four men, four lords; voilá, no plural problems there. He pluralizes title correctly, as one would expect.
But it made me think of how noted art critic Barbara Pollack and I recently pondered the question: "Statues of Liberty" or "Statue of LIbertys/'s/ies"?
Which is correct?
While musician and producer Barb Morrison wondered about the verb "blow-dry". If it happened yesterday, do you say, "She blew dry her hair" or "She blow-dried her hair"?
And I wondered, thanks to a plurality of mice that seem to be affecting friends in NYC, if there is more than one mouse using the hole, as is almost always so, why is it never "micehole"?
Well, of course mousehole is a closed compound noun, like haircut, and it's pretty clear those nouns take the usual "s" at the end whether many mice are in and out of the hole and no matter how many hairs are being cut.
For open compounds, most style manuals recommend that writers and ediors pluralize the main noun and not the modifier. Thus, there is more than one woman when there is more than one mother-in-law, and "mother" is the main noun, so it's "mothers-in-law," just as in the late 1960s TV sitcom "The Mothers-in-Law," starring the inimitable Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard.
Thus with it is with attorneys general, runners-up, justices of the peace, and so forth.
Regarding the Statue of Liberty question: do you have more than one statue or more than one liberty? I'd bet more one statue, so I'd go with "He created a series of Statues of Liberty," but I'm open to argument.
The case of "blow-dry" is even more interesting. Which is the main verb, and which the modifier? Hard not to argue that the verb is "dry" and "blow" functions as a modifier; we could say air-dry vs blow-dry. Thus, I'd conjugate the verb "dry" and think about how I blow-dried my hair yesterday and had better not do it again today.
What about you? Where would you come down on blow-dried and statues of liberty? And do you remember the horror of "The Mothers in Law"?
Ellen Scordato has 25 years' book publishing experience as an editor, copy editor, proofreader, and managing editor. She's now a partner in The Stonesong Press, a nonfiction book producer and agency. In addition to her work at Stonesong, Ellen has taught grammar, punctuation, and style at the New School for more than 12 years in the English Language Studies department and is currently teaching English as a Second Language at Cabrini Immigrant Services.
