Is it okay to say "Captains Carter and Marvel"?

Question

An artist wrote "Captains Carter and Marvel" to refer to both Captain Carter and Captain Marvel together.

Is it okay to use the title only once and make it plural when there are multiple people with that title mentioned in the sentence? Can I see some other examples?

Captain Marvel was 1950s and Captain Carter was 1900s. They'd look good together, though. — John Lawler, May 17 '22 at 13:39

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 17 '22 at 07:50

2

I just chose two generic names and searched for Captains Smith and Jones. Plenty of examples.

This is a perfectly normal construction, and can be extended to Messrs (pronounced messers, plural of Mister), Misses, Sisters, Brothers, Sergeants, Presidents... Where there is a title, it can be pluralised.

Mrs is difficult. While one might mention unmarried sisters as "The Misses Bulstrode" (or whatever), Mrs doesn't lend itself to pluralisation.

answered May 17 '22 at 07:50

Andrew Leach

101,901

I've seen "the Mrs." attempted, in bad fiction, but nobody talks like that anymore. – John Lawler May 17 '22 at 13:40
I thought the plural of Mrs was Mmes. This question has newspaper citations that use it in its spelled-out form. – tchrist May 18 '22 at 03:11

Is it okay to say "Captains Carter and Marvel"?

1 Answers1