Plus and Minus

Would you spell pluses and minuses this way?

A colleague raised this question the other day and I found myself thinking further about it after I had answered quickly. First of all, he asked whether "plus" and "minus" are nouns nowadays? I think there is no doubt that they are. You hear people saying things like "A plus of the conference centre is the big car park, but the distance from any form of public transport is a distinct minus".

So, the words are being used as nouns. Once they are being spoken, they will be written and probably used in the plural. So we need to know how to spell pluses/plusses and minuses/minusses. "Minuses" seems to me to be quite clear. It rhymes with sinuses not with blunderbusses, and the emphasis is on the first syllable so there is no rule or precedent to suggest that it should be spelt otherwise.

What about plusses though? Pluses looks to me as though it should rhyme with abuses - and there are plenty of people out there (including BBC Sport) spelling it with a double "s". But then there is "buses". I don't know about you, but I have so far failed to think of any other single syllable words ending in a single "s". So, my preference is for pluses and minuses - after all, it seems tidier to follow the same rule for both unless there is a good reason not to.

Little nerdish note: bus comes from the Latin "omnibus" which means "for everyone". We have shortened it to "bus" which is probably why there are not many words like it.

Comments

• A test spelling question to someone just finishing today’s FT crossword elicited the answer ‘pluses’!
  Visually, however, ‘plusses’ looks more like the way we actually pronounce the word (but then English is notorious in that respect for freezing spelling while pronunciation changes).

  By David Peregrine-Jones on 2009 01 09

• Yes, one of many little amusements that arise in our crazy language.  Mind you the French have frozen spellings in a big way while the pronunciation changes (eg roi and toi which are now pronounced rwuh and twuh)- I guess it probably happens in all languages.

  Plusses is no more wrong than focusses although I personally prefer focuses.

  By GTG on 2009 01 16

• Another single syllable word ending with s is pus, but happily you can’t pluralise it so we don’t need to worry about that one!

  By Cathy Swift on 2009 06 19

• Hi Jane - as a scientist I couldn’t resist this one!  What about ‘gas’, which becomes ‘gases’ (not ‘gasses’) in the plural?  It follows the same rule as ‘bus’.

  GTG’s comment below raises the question of whether or not to double the last consonant in words like ‘commit’ when it becomes ‘committed’, or like ‘benefit’ > ‘benefited’, ‘target’ > ‘targeted’, ‘focus > ‘focused’, etc.  Many grammar books say there is no rule, just learn them.  However, there is a rule, which works in every case: when you speak the word, if the stress is on the first syllable (’focus’, ‘benefit’, ‘target’) you don’t double the consonant; if it’s on the last one (’commit’) you do.  So GTG is wrong, along with ‘focusses’!

  By David Skinner on 2009 11 28

• I have just done a web-search on plusses and minuses, as I am a medical secretary and needed to type ‘three plusses of blood’ (surprisingly, the computer didn’t alert me to plusses being a possible error).
  I am very pedantic about spelling, and while I don’t like the look of either plusses or pluses, the former definitely corresponds to the correct pronunciation, whereas the latter looks more like ‘plooses’, so I opted for plusses.
  While I agree that pluses could rhyme with buses, and that it would be very neat to apply the same rule for both mathematical symbols (pluses/minuses), the reason minuses works is due to the inflection on the previous syllable.
  Another single-syllable word ending in a single S: pus… but doesn’t go in the plural as it’s a substance… unless we were to talk about lots of different types of pusses - or would you say puses?…
  Sarah Thomas, Bristol

  By Sarah Thomas on 2010 05 18