Grammar Debacle!

Parents Forum
1

<p>Okay… so it’s not really a debacle, per se, but it’s important to me, nonetheless. I was reading over one of my essays for college, and I realized that I wrote “the importances of family, of reliability, and of punctuality have been…” (or something along those lines). </p>

<p>I was wondering if the use of “importances” is incorrect; is that the correct plural form? As I was reading it, I thought “Is that really a word?” Because one does not hear “importances” used very often.</p>

<p>Any help? :o</p>

2

<p>Actually, I don’t recall ever seeing importance written in the plural.</p>

3

<p>There is no reason to fret over the extra “s”. There is 99% chance they will never see it, especially since their attention will be drawn to the redundancy of the three “of”. :)</p>

<p>Relax, you’ll be fine.</p>

4

<p>i think it might be “the importance of family, of reliability and of punctuality has been” i dunno i would have to see ti in the sentence…</p>

5

<p>Importances=not a word. The question is whether the verb “have” should be singular. I agree with KountingSheep–has.</p>

6

<p>calidan, if that’s the worst thing you can find going over your submitted aps, you’re probably in very good shape. Besides, now you have something to focus your fears on during the long wait.</p>

<p>If I were reading it in context, I’d assume it was a typo. Look on the bright side. Your spell checker would have caught it (mine does), so that means you didn’t spell check. Therefore all the correct spelling elsewhere in you ap can be attributed directly to you.</p>

7

<p>Actually, I really would not worry about it. I do not think that there are too many guidelines that would ban the use of the plural for the word importance. </p>

<p>A quick test could consist of replacing importances by significances … the result does not seem to “hurt” the eye. </p>

<p>Another one could consist of adding a word to the sentence as in, "“the relative importances of family, of reliability, and of punctuality have been…” or “the various importances of family, of reliability, and of punctuality have been…” </p>

<p>All in all, I think that using the plural was simply an author’s prerogative, as long as the use was consistent.</p>

8

<p>Okay, thank you all very much! :smiley: I feel better.</p>

<p>And kountingsheep- I did say “have”- my mistake!</p>

<p>And nan- the funny thing is, I did spell check it, but it never picked it up so I assumed it was fine!</p>