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I have NO idea if I spelled the plural of dwarf even remotely correct…
(or if the above sentence is even proper grammar)
The Dreamland Chronicles
The Dreamland Chronicles by Scott Christian Sava
I have NO idea if I spelled the plural of dwarf even remotely correct…
(or if the above sentence is even proper grammar)
I’m happy with it. Dwarfs just looks weird to me and seems more like “short people” rather than a different race. http://grammarist.com/usage/dwarfs-dwarves/
He had to go mention them… I imagine they will be slightly upset at the peace approach.
Technically, both Dwarfs and Dwarves are correct, but from what I’ve seen, most people prefer Dwarves because in English, usually when a word ends in -f, the plural of the said word would be -ves. 🙂
Dwarfs is the “correct” plural. Dwarves is a recently introduced variant, most notably used but not invented by JRR Tolkein in LoTR etc.
In other words, given this is a fantasy comic, you got it right Scott!
Apparently, this one of Tolkien’s major difficulties in publishing his books. He wanted to spell it “Elves” and “Dwarves”, but “helpful” typesetters at the publishers kept changing them.
I’m going to go with Dwarves as well, it does look proper, I’m just wondering that the possessive apostrophe at the end of it does look a bit wrong.
I have my degree in English, and I can assure you, all is well. In any case, since the characters are speaking, perfect grammar isn’t entirely necessary; when was the last time you heard someone speak with perfect grammar? Colloquial English is fine for most dialogue, and can even add character (particularly when you’re trying to write for someone with an accent).
Thank you all!
D-W-A-R-V-E-S Yep,sounds right to me! 😉
– It’s my thing about blood.
– Well, it’s sick!
– It’s no sicker than your thing with dwarves—
– Dwarfs!
– Dwarfs.
– Dwarfs are very upsetting.
— Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods, “Agony II”
Neither, the proper name is Khazad, or maybe Naugrim. ;-p
No, “the above sentence” is not “even proper grammar”. It should be:
“I have NO idea if I spelled the plural of dwarf even remotely correctLY…”
Correct is an adjective, while correctly is the adverb; since you’re modifying the verd “spelled”, you need the latter. 🙂
(And YES, I realize that’s not the sentence you wanted corrected. But this was more fun. 😉 )
Spelling matters aside, I’d be more interested in finding out what the Dwarf tribe’s (ha, finessed it) problem would be with the Nightmare Realm. We know under Nic they cut down trees to built pirate ships and probably rendered other assistance. Has finding out they were serving a usurper who murdered their ancestors turned the Dwarfs / Dwarves completely hostile?
Actually that IS the sentence I was asking about. I wanted to type correctly… but remotely correctly didn’t really sound right.
🙂
I both want to hug you for referencing my favorite musical and strangle you for getting that wonderfully hilarious little song stuck in my head. 😛
Maybe not completely…but it’s not unfathomable that they’d reject peace with the realm that they had been blindly aiding in its raids against Dreamland. They may feel the need to prove themselves true to Dreamland by being antagonistic to the Nightmare Realm. Besides, these dwarves seem to fit into the typical mold of “dwarves are stubborn warrior figures.” 🙂
HA! Well it looks like all of us were fooled into thinking that you were concerned about your comic. 🙂 I hadn’t even bothered to give your post more than the quick, “non-editing” glance that it took to know essentially what you said, so I didn’t catch the grammatical error until David fixed it for you. 😛
Grammatically, I agree with everyone here. It’s fine. …however, I would suggest that Orion not use contractions, i.e. “can’t” because he seems to be a little more proper than that. If he were to say “can not,” I believe that to be more fitting to his formal speech.
Maybe this is just me, but I generally go with ‘dwarfs’ for anything non-fictional. As in referring to people with dwarfism (would not do this though, kinda rude to put it mildly) or, say, red dwarfs*. In fiction – where it usually refers to the race – I’d go with dwarves…unless Word of God says otherwise.
*fictional spacestation not included.
Or you can make up your own plural for your own setting.
I use Dwaren myself.
No no no.
I was asking about the comic.
But the line underneath me asking about the comic was me questioning if my QUESTION was proper grammar too.
So…there were two questions.
You needed the adverb “remotely” because it’s modifying “correctly”. 🙂 Adverbs chain, and yes, that can lead to lots of “ly”‘s in a row.
Ly ly ly ly…
My own thought–in a world without either elfs or dwarfs, the plurals are rare enough that they would tend to be “regularized”–that is, just add an s. However, in a world in which elves and dwarves are running around, and even just talked about regularly, the irregular plurals would survive–especially if the races in question had preferences. That’s why we still have wives and knives, mice and children, geese and deer, and not wifes, knifes, mouses, childs, gooses and deers.
I dont like his tone.
Also those saying ‘Dwarfs’ for non-fictional and Dwarves for fantasy, you are correct.