Re: ngettext() not enough?

[Paul Eggert]

"John.Cowan" <address@hidden> writes:

> I consider "The temperature rose by 1.0 degrees" to violate
> the Sprachgefuehl of English speakers; "1.0 degree" outnumbers "1.0 degrees"
> by 2.4 to 1 on Google, though some of these hits are spurious.

I dunno, I just checked Google, and the first page of results for the
query "1.0 degrees" contained no spurious hits, whereas the first page
for "1.0 degree" contained mostly spurious hits.

Some spurious hits were obvious, e.g., "1.0 Degree Options 2.0
Financial Assistance" (twice).  Less obviously, the spurious hits were
talking about "1.0-degree" resolution, or "display at 1.0 degree
elevation", where the normal English practice is to use singular even
if the number is 2.0; or they were saying "1.0 degree/V", where again
one would use singular even if the number was 2.0.

The only nonspurious hits out of the first 10 were:

  Differential Phase: 1.0 degree @ 1V p-p
    (This is a legitimate hit.)

  Heading: ± 1.0 degrees, 1.0 degree repeatability
    (Here the document is not even internally consistent!)

  Sheet metal bends shown as 90° on drawing shall be 90 +/- 1.0 degree
    (which is pretty odd: "ninety plus or minus one degree"?)

So, if this is any indication of actual English usage, I'd say that
"1.0 degrees" is more popular, and the people who write "1.0 degree"
are usually not using "degree" in the same context that we're talking
about (or they're being sloppy).