[General] Pluralizing

[F1Addict]

I have noticed a recent trend to pluralize the noun following a number. Some examples include "ten days war" and "A 3 Years Warranty". This seems common practice in English speaking European countries but I have always felt it read awkwardly here in the U.S. I would love to know your opinion on this.

 

[Tdol]

I would use either ten days' war or a ten-day war. Ten days war is neither fish nor fowl and doesn't work for me.

 

[F1Addict]

I would expect that answer from a British English speaker, as I wrote above, I realize it's common practice there. However, I was more curious as to the American perspective. In all of my life I have never pluralized the unit of time in this context.

 

[MikeNewYork]

This AmE speaker agrees with Tdol.

 

[emsr2d2]

This AmE speaker agrees with Tdol.

A fact which was entirely clear from your clicking on "Like" on Tdol's post.

 

[MikeNewYork]

The OP seemed to be looking for another opinion.

 

[F1Addict]

The OP seemed to be looking for another opinion.

Not far from true but I'm not expecting blind agreement. I was hoping for some etymology or evidence of historical usage in the U.S. so that I had a better understanding. I've posed this question and offered the same examples to several of my friends and they have all responded negatively to the pluralization of the time unit. A few of these friends are teachers, there's a middle school principal, even professors of English. All agree that "24 HourS Drive-thru" sounds and reads awkward as do the other examples. I consulted both the Chicago Manual of Style and The Elements of Style and both concur with my opinion yet I continue to find this odd usage. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I had ever read the phrase "A 3-years Guarantee" and I remember thinking how silly it was, then. My boss (at the time) was Jamaican by birth but a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge and insisted on the odd phrasing whenever I wrote an RFQ/RFP.

For the most part, my search for understanding is just entertainment. The "s" does annoy me, though

 

[emsr2d2]

I find the "s" equally strange and slightly annoying. For me, it should read "24-hour Drive-Thru", although I realise that the hyphen would look odd given that "24" and "hour" aren't on the same line. It surprises me that they bothered with the hyphen for "Drive-Thru" but failed to use one correctly above it.

For me, for "24 hours" to be used, I would need to change it to "Drive-Thru: Open 24 Hours". No hyphen obviously.

I'll save my dislike of "thru" for a different thread!