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I need to refer to a selection that contains zero or more products. This will be used in a marketing email that displays some products for sale.

I consider the "selection" to be some kind of box in which I can put some products (no matter how many). To me, it's a "products selection", since the plural applies to the content of the selection.

However, I have found several occurrences of "product selection" on the Internet. These did not seem to refer to "the selection of one product", but to the same as in my case.

So what should I use: "product selection" or "products selection", and why?

papillon
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    Does this answer your question? When are attributive nouns plural?. Donkey sanctuary but dogs home. With novel pairings, the singular-form attributive is usual, but not mandatory, and it may be considered better to emphasise the plurality. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 18 '20 at 16:53
  • @EdwinAshworth It does, thanks! I did not know the name of the grammatical rule so it was impossible for me to find this page. I understand that the singular is the default rule, but plural is also valid and useful when singular leads to confusion. I will prefer using plural by default since I find it more explicit. – papillon Nov 18 '20 at 17:02

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Product can be taken to be singular or plural; when paired with selection it implies more than one product as much as it implies a single product. If you were shopping for computer parts, you might say that your product selection consisted of an Acer motherboard, Crucial memory, and an AMD CPU. Likewise, if you were in charge of a marketing team seeking to buy a new layout program, you might say that your product selection was InDesign.

I would go with product selection. I think there are regional/national differences though, as I suspect the Brits would be more likely to use a plural though it's not strictly necessary.

FeliniusRex - gone
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