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Duplicate of:
“User accounts” or “users account”
“Employee list” or “employees list”
Should a list of tokens be called a “token list” or a “tokens list”
“BookList” or “booksList?”
Is it correct to say “lesson count” or “lessons count”?
"Thing count" or "things count"
And others

Which of the following are correct?

  1. Countries List
  2. Country List

It is the title of a web page where users can view the list of countries and select one.

Community
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Abhilash
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  • This may be different based on one's dialect, but for me (American speaker) only Country List and List of Countries are correct. –  Jan 17 '13 at 07:07
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    @BillFranke- Interestingly, if you add an adjective then countries becomes viable: banned countries list, first-world countries list, etc. So then can you elide the adjective and get countries list? – Jim Jan 17 '13 at 07:12
  • @Jim good point, but then it sounds exactly like the possessive form, i.e. countries' list. – Magnus Jan 17 '13 at 07:19
  • @tchrist - User's Guide / Users' Guide, in here Guide can be taken as a sigular ! so i am not sure how countries list could be similar to them

    Bill thanks bro, it is an interesting share

    Jim thanks mate, my notion here to use "Countries List" was to have a short title

     – Abhilash Jan 17 '13 at 07:21
  • @Jim: Yes, Banned Countries List etc. is perfectly normal to me. One can do that elision thing with math, and with natural language in a piece of discourse, but not as a rule of thumb: No one will know where it came from, because elision isn't always detectable. I think that Countries List may be normal British English, though. –  Jan 17 '13 at 07:27
  • @Bill Franke So usage of "Countries List" is also grammatically correct ? – Abhilash Jan 17 '13 at 07:32
  • Yes, it's grammatically correct. As I said, I suspect that it would be considered idiomatic British English. OTOH, it's just a list name, so grammar is a tertiary concern here. What's important is whether the reader will understand the meaning of the list name, and both "country list" and "countries list" are perfectly clear. It's a style choice. –  Jan 17 '13 at 07:46
  • Countries list sounds very odd to my British ears. There are a lot of things that cannot be termed 'wrong' as in 'ungrammatical' but that are also never used except for quirky effect. A desert ship, large and by, anchor was weighed, countries list. I think even country list would be tend to be avoided - is it a list of countries, or a list pertaining to the country being talked about (cf County Court)? – Edwin Ashworth Jan 17 '13 at 09:18
  • @Edwin it is just Country/countries list in the title, i would any day prefer list of countries. But in this scenario the rules are layed out and i have to follow any one of them to maintain consistency across other pages :) my doubt was on the grammer part thanks to you and Bill i am clear now – Abhilash Jan 17 '13 at 09:34

2 Answers2

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Surely it's obvious that the list is a list. If this is a title and it needs to be as short as possible, then just head the page

Countries

as that is a perfectly adequate description of the content. To add List is at best superfluous and at worst treating your users like idiots.

As such, this is not the same question as one about whether to use an apostrophe as in Users/User's/Users' Guide because for a book title you do need the word Guide. Even if "Countries" is a link with no visible content, it's unlikely to need List: it's likely to be more useful if it were worded "Choose a country".

Andrew Leach
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My gut feeling (British) says that a list always takes a singular form to qualify what kind of list it is, unless you use list of .... My gut also insists that list of countries sounds more natural.

If you used a plural form then it'd also end up being somewhat easily confused with the possessive form - i.e. the countries' list or the country's list.

Magnus
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  • Yeah same here, i also feel that List of countries sound more natural but is usage of "Country List" correct ? Note: I have to keep the title as short as possible – Abhilash Jan 17 '13 at 07:24
  • I'd say it's grammatically correct, and if your goal is an extremely short title then go for it. At the very least it should cause less confusion when people read it out loud ;). – Magnus Jan 17 '13 at 07:25