What is the best way to write a plural of a plural?

Question

What started out as programming has turned into a curious language/grammar question.

I'm writing a program and want to clearly specify a variable name. The variable will be a dictionary and each item in the dictionary stores the details of a "revision".

variable = {
    "revision_a": {"detail_a": "", "detail_b": ""},
    "revision_b": {"detail_a": "", "detail_b": ""}
}

I want to name the variable revision_details but I don't believe it clearly communicates what the list is. If I saw a variable named revision_details I would assume that it stores details about a single revision.

revision_details = {"detail_a": "", "detail_b": ""}

In this case would revisions_details be correct grammar? If this is or something similar correct what is the official term for this and what does the correct version look like? Otherwise would I just need to find a different name like details_of_revisions or just revisions?

To clarify, what is the right way to say "revisions details", i.e. multiple details about multiple revisions?

I don't understand what you're asking. English has no such thing as plural adjectives. — tchrist, Jan 01 '21 at 04:06
Maybe have revision_details for a single item and collection_of_revision_details for the whole set. — stackzebra, Jan 02 '21 at 10:06
Surely what you have as variable is simply an array of revisions, so it would make sense to call that array revisions? — Andrew Leach, Jan 02 '21 at 10:09
However, naming variables is explicitly off-topic so you may want to rework your question into one about a problem with English, like this earlier one. — Andrew Leach, Jan 02 '21 at 10:11
The subtly of an s in the middle of a long name may lead to confusion. Not clear why Revisions wouldn’t suffice. — jimm101, Jan 02 '21 at 13:14

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 02 '21 at 18:03

I guess it would technically be something like

revisions' details

But I don't know if you really wanted to put an apostrophe in your code. You should probably go with whatever will make the code clearest. Maybe just "revisions," though "revisions_details" is fine too.

The language you're discussing is kind of a cross between English and Python (or whatever coding language it is), so you can pretty much mix it as you like.

What is the best way to write a plural of a plural?

1 Answers1