Staff is singular. Staves is plural.
Grammar nerd out.
This is a Britain vs US thing (though, sure, stave is a back-formation from staves).
If it were as clear cut as youâre suggesting, Elaine Gould wouldnât get it âwrongâ, would she?
2 Likes
Some very prominent public figures used the ânucularâ construction instead of the more correct ânuclear.â That doesnât make it right, for grammar nerds, at least. Language changes with popular usage, and thereâs a place for sticking to the linguistic roots of technical terms. Carry on.
Sure. I guess my point is that in the U.K., the âstaffâ ship has sailed. The textbooks and syllabuses that we use to teach children exclusively use âstaveâ, and have done for many decades (though donât ask me how many; Iâm not sure). The staff grew up with âstaveâ, so thatâs what they teach.
Itâs a little bit like when Google reCAPTCHA asks me to identify a âcrosswalkâ. Of course I can figure out what it means, but the word isnât in common use here.
Busbyâs Complete Dictionary of Music, published in 1786, uses âstaveâ, and not staff.
In 1842, the Westmoreland Review notes " There is a schism among musicians, whether this should be staff or stave , pronounced by some staaf . Authorities are mostly in favour of âstaveâ but custom may be pleaded for âstaffâ and âstavesâ in the plural."
âStaveâ has been used as a singular word for âa piece of woodâ since the 14th century, at least.
Which linguistic roots are you thinking of?
@benwiggy You and @pianoleo have done your homework. Your arguments are persuasive. I will reconsider and stand down (while still clinging to my preference). Thanks for your insights!
2 Likes
There are a fair few slight differences between British English and US English, and I would humbly suggest that in general itâs a delightful example of the fun that can be had with language.
Writing the Dorico manual in US English as a very British person has its quirks but itâs turned out fine 
(writing âlabelingâ instead of âlabellingâ is still a challenge, though, and there may in fact be some inconsistencies in the area of double Ls - given the spelling of my name though perhaps I can be excused 
)
1 Like
And for heavenâs sake, British people, drop the superfluous U in colour, favour, etc! 
I lost a spelling bee in 7th grade for spelling a-m-p-h-i-t-h-e-a-t-r-e⌠so Iâm still a little salty about that one. 
2 Likes
On a tangentially related topic, one âstandardâ that amuses me is the gallon. We donât use gallons for much apart from alcoholic beverages (in the U.K.), but we standardised the Imperial Gallon (roughly the same as the Ale Gallon) in 1824 and the US continues to use the Wine Gallon.
It doesnât really matter in real life, but Quoraâs car pages (for instance) often feature complaints that âmy American version of that European car doesnât get anywhere x miles per gallon. The graph must be wrongâ. Itâs actually just that the gallons are smaller.
I will discuss this with our grammar professors (even though itâs actually a word-use question, not grammar) when we next gather in the stave room.
Lillie, the consonant-doubling word that intrigues me is program/programming. Even though (in the U.S.) the traditional rule is âin a single syllable word, or a word accented on the last syllable, if the word ends in a single consonant preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant before adding a suffix beginning with a vowel,â I have never seen programming spelled with only one m. Apparently the UK spelling of the root word programme has influences even here across the pond.
Actually Iâve observed this in Gould the other day. Not being a native English speaker, I had assumed that the correct word was staff, and didnât think of an US/UK language difference, until I was searching for the word in the kindle version of the book. Incidentally, thereâs an occurrence of staff, in page 666, in the index:
On page 666 ? Curious.
5 Likes
Exactly! no more, no less! I thought the same.
2 Likes
On the fluid tangent, an American visiting orchestra member staying with me said
âA pintâs a pound the whole world roundâ.
I replied, No
âA pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarterâ
The US pint has 16 fluid ounces, the imperial pint 20, which explains the smaller gallon in the US.
1 Like
In Portugal one has to be careful with the word bilhĂŁo (billion). If the speaker is Brazilian, it means the same as in English (one thousand millions). But in Portuguese from Portugal, itâs actually a million millions!
While weâre on the subject of linguistic pet-peeves, Iâm often bothered by the use of âorientateâ as a verb. Sure, it probably started as a back-formation from orientation and perhaps itâs now officially accepted as a correct word, but the verb really should be âorientâ, and âorientateâ shouldnât be any more correct than âtransportateâ.
Normalcy (instead of normality) drives me nuts (especially as often as folks use it during the current health crisis). Normalcy was either an intellectual faux pas or an intentional corruption used during Warren G. Hardingâs presidential campaign. Iâm sorry it stuck.
I blame Shakespeare for introducing a lot of nonsense into the English language. I mean, he used window as a verb, for pityâs sake!
We dropped âgottenâ in favour of âgotâ about 300 years ago, and Iâm pretty sure weâve never had anything that âharkenedâ or âhearkenedâ back - always âharkedâ. As to getting off of the busâŚ
I tell you what: if we drop our redundant âuâ from colour, favour and vigour, will you drop your redundant syllables? 
