Grammar of verbs for nouns with "(s)"?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Tom Johnson wondered: <<In my user interface, I have a confirmation  
message that says, "Success! Your meeting(s) have been deleted." The  
"(s)" makes the subject singular or plural. This leaves me wondering  
whether "have" is grammatically correct. I'm not even sure what the  
(s) is called. Any help here?>>

Ideally, the interface should be smart enough to choose the correct  
noun-verb combination (singular for one deleted meeting or plural for  
two or more) based on the user's actions, but that's never gonna  
happen. <g> But in defense of this suggestion, this communicates what  
has happened far more clearly than the current solution: users should  
be told unequivocally what happened (one item deleted or more items  
deleted) to provide feedback on what they just did. I've deleted more  
than one file by mistake, and would have appreciated the warning that  
I didn't just delete the one file I wanted to eliminate. Why not  
provide similar feedback for meetings?

The "(s)" is called an atrocity. <g> Well, perhaps that's too strong a  
word. But it's lazy and inherently equivocal. If you can't persuade  
the programmers to provide clear and correct feedback, at least make  
the ambiguity explicit <g>: "The meeting or meetings that you selected  
have been deleted." An argument could be made for deleting the word  
"success", since the disappearance of the meeting from the view should  
provide clearer feedback that the deletion succeeded. But I don't  
suppose the word hurts.

--------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Hart (www.geoff-hart.com)
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
--------------------------------------------------------
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