[sc34wg3] "Topic Map" or "Topic Maps"?

[Mary Nishikawa]

Hi Michel,

I have to say I still agree with Steve and I think that we should all check 
our Style Manuals, as I said before. I don't think that this one need to be 
up for debate. We should also depend on the standards of others :)


At 12:32 AM 1/3/03 +0100, Steve Pepper wrote:
>At 15:24 02.01.2003 -0500, Michel Biezunski wrote:
>>It's not a personal SRN practice. The name of the standard
>>has always been "Topic Maps" (plural and capital letters).
>
>I do know what the name of the standard is. That's not the
>issue.

Exactly.

Sorry if it seems that I am  giving an English Usage lesson here, but I 
will :)
  I am using a reference to back me on this one.

The Standard is "ISO 13250 Topic Maps"

The Plural appears at the end.

When Martin Bryan wrote the title for his work he used, "XML Schema for ISO 
13250 Topic Maps." Good title.

If you want to use a plural you will need to have these as the titles.

Information Set for ISO 1250 Topic Maps
Metamodel for ISO Topic Maps
Query Language for ISO Topic Maps
Constraint Language for ISO Topic Maps

I was once a member of the Council of Biology Editors which is now the 
Council of Science Editors. The American Society for Microbiology is a 
member and they publish an excellent style manual, so I use them as my 
reference here.

Quoting from American Society for Microbiology Style Manual Chapter 4 
English; about Plurals: "A noun should be singular when it acts as an 
adjective: plaque assays, datum point, drug susceptibility studies... 
Exceptions: data processing and other phrases."

Now about hyphenation: "Do not hyphenate a noun phrase or other phrase used 
adjectivally if it is a well-established scientific or technical term and 
there is no hyphen in the term itself."

Carbon monoxide poisoning
guinea pig serum
cell wall protein
soft tissue infection

I think that Topic Map fits in this category so we do not need to hyphenate 
it, but we knew that already :) I wrote these to show you examples.

So, if we want to follow Standard English Usage, I think that we had better 
use the singular if "Topic Map" is being using to modify theses nouns or 
phrases:  Metamodel, Information Set, Query Language, Constraint Language.

So we would have Topic Map Information Set, etc. The examples above are 
also correct. We can debate this if we like.

"Information Set for ISO 13250 Topic Maps" versus "Topic Map Information Set."

Cheers,
Mary