Day 32: The perils of plural (and I’m not talking marriage)

Book of Mormons.

Books of Mormon.

Copies of the Book of Mormon.

We all agreed on the grammatical correctness of option three — but it’s a bit stuffy, no? Like really, who’s going to say that in casual conversation? Elder, let’s take four copies of the Book of Mormon today. No.

Option two, however, garnered the greatest contempt. When used, it indicated an unwarranted pretension, a speaker who recognized the problematic nature of option one, probably even looked down on folks who used it, but then completely failed to find a solution any more accurate or elegant than the first. If anything, it’s actually less.

Given the foregoing reasons — and I know this will come as a great shock to those of you who know me best, but I just need to say it — given the foregoing reasons, I’ve made peace, once and for all and fully, with Book of Mormons.

(This is Day 32 of a 100-day project. For more about When I Was Mormon, read the introductory post. To access older posts, visit the archive.)