--- Juliette Torres <juliette_torres at yahoo.com> wrote: ... > Or maybe this suggests that it doesn't actually matter > if you use one ell or two. > > Perish the thought. It must mean something. ... I think you can let that thought perish. I haven't met our esteemed author, but my impression of him from the books, his posts to this list, and his responses to Mark on "Cracks" is that he's not very nitpicky about this sort of thing. (Unlike me and other people who have strong opinions on "CD's" versus "CDs".) He might easily make a mistake in coming up with a hypocoristic version of "Morrolan", or not notice that "Welok" was misspelled on a map he'd commissioned. I could be wrong--in which case we may see whether he notices mistakes about his character--but I don't try to interpret anything in his books that could be a mistake. Not to mention all the other people who can introduce mistakes into a book. > (*There seems to be a continuing confusion over > whether or not "Deathgate" contains an s. Is it > possessive? Is it plural? Is there some Dragaeran > construction that is neutral about plurality and > singularity, similar to the manner gya is neutral > about gender? Does it matter if you're using it > literally or an an expletive?) ... Same thing. After all, some people say "Holy smoke!" and some say "Holy smokes!" Jerry Friedman seldom says either. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com