Proper plurals?

Speaking properly is never pedantic. Using the grammatically correct plural of a word is proper, not ostentatious.

If you can do it correctly, and it’s appropriate for the audience, go for it. (Hint: octopi is not correct. Neither is virii. Using an incorrect plural when you’re trying to look knowledgeable will make you look like a pretentious stuffed-shirt.)

according to wiki “There are three forms of the plural of octopus; namely, octopuses, octopi, and octopodes. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.”

Sure:

Mice = Meeces

As in, “I’ll smash those meeces to pieces.”

proper grammar through cartoons

I try to use the correct plural form of a word all the time, but if I’m unsure, I just rearrange the sentence so I can use the singular form, or a form of the word that I’m sure won’t cause me to look like an idiot….

I agree complelely with Les.
It drives me nuts when my wife (who is of Italian descent) tells me we are having raviolis for dinner. I always have to point out that she is pluralizing a word that is already plural. The other thing that irks me is sandwich shops that offer paninis, not understanding that panino is the Italian word for sandwich and panini is plural.

@kfingerman: Wikipedia is commenting on current usage, in which people who are trying to sound educated use the incorrect plural octopi.

In English, you can correctly form the plural of loan words either by treating them as English (thus, octopus, octopuses; index, indexes) or by forming the plural in their native language (octopus, octopodes; index, indices). Either of these is correct, although which one is preferable depends on the audience you’re writing for.

If you misread the word origin and form the plural incorrectly (such as octopus, octopi on the model of the -us, -i declension in Latin, when octopus comes from Greek), or when you don’t even do it correctly in terms of the original language (such as virus, which is in the -us, -us declension in Latin, and even if it were in the -us, -i declension, the plural would be viri, not virii) you just look like an idiot with delusions of sophistication.

Someone who has more time than I do ought to correct Wikipedia. The virtue of Wikipedia is not that it is always correct (because any ass can see that it is not) but that when it is incorrect, it can be corrected.

For the most part, I do, although I can’t quite bring myself to say “sphinges,” not that it comes up very often. If I am working under a style guide that prescribes a certain form, I follow it, even if it requires me to say “data is.” However, I constantly correct “criteria” to “criterion” in the singular (and would never allow “criterias”).

Either “indexes” or “indices” is acceptable under various guides. It has to be all one way or all the other, though: you can’t have “indexes” and “appendices” in the same book

If a word is thoroughly anglicized, I do use a different criterion and may take my guidance from the dictionary of choice. For example, I would not refer to an agenda item as an “agendum” and would allow “agendas” even though technically “agenda” is already plural (“things to do”). What would really make me scream is an attempt to pluralize “agenda” as “agendae” as if it were a feminine singular rather than a neuter plural.

Correcting these things in a document I am editing is one thing, and editing conversation is another. In general I speak as I write, compound and complex sentences and long paragraphs and all, but I don’t normally correct other people. As a rule people do not thank you for editing their speech, so unless the speaker is one of my children, I choke it back. Even junior editors hear from me only in private and only if the case is egregious, such as pronouncing “chasm” with the initial sound of “chat” or asserting that they are going to “do diligence.”

@cwilbur – OED lists octopuses, octopi and octopodes (in that order); it labels octopodes “rare.”

Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists octopuses and octopi

Fowler’s Modern English Usage states that “the only acceptable plural in English is octopuses,” and that octopi is misconceived and octopodes pedantic.

Even in the rarefied world of words there appears some dissent.

yes because i think that they’re cool

I think everyone should strive to use the correct plural, as well as correct grammar. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable, but I really thought “Octopi” was correct! Ha-ha. Guess you’re never too old to learn.

@kfingerman: The OED attempts to be comprehensive and descriptive; I’m surprised it did not label ‘octopi’ as common but incorrect.

Merriam-Webster gets worse and worse with each edition. They attempt to be descriptive, but this means that they allow many usages that are widely considered incorrect (such as octopi) because they can find frequent citations of them. The problem is that the person who relies on Merriam-Webster as the arbiter of correctness is likely to be unpleasantly surprised. Note that I don’t have a problem with a dictionary noting that ‘octopi’ is frequently used as the plural of ‘octopus’; I do have a problem with a dictionary that does so silently, without commenting on its correctness.

And Fowler is dead on in this one. As usual.

@kfingerman, as to the last part of your question:
>Where’s the line between ignorant and pedantic?

I don’t think there is a line between ignorant and pedantic, as if they were adjacent. I think there is a very broad expanse of correctness, which in itself has shades and degrees, in between ignorant at one end of the continuum and pedantic at the other.

What Les said.

Though sometimes it’s funnier to bend the ruleses.