Re: what kinds of cats?

[...]

And there is the dog, and there are many kinds of it.

Liegt vielleicht da der Hund begraben?

Well, there are dogs, and there are many kinds of them (not "of it").

Well I am glad to hear that. But apparently Webster wants that, and the
Chicago Manual of Style just quotes Webster, and the RFC-Editor (which is
where this thread actually started) follows the Chicago Manual of Style
regardless :-( .

Even more OK as "Rottweiler".

Obaue: I think "okay" is more common in America and "OK" in Britain,
even though the expression originated here in America as the initials.

Probably not all of us.

...

Maybe we should.  Dogs, plural, come in different kinds.  And many of
us say things like "those kind of dogs".

--
Jerry Friedman

So it seems to be an American practice - and a totally illogical practice
at that.

A Dachshund is "a kind of dog". OK?
A Rotweiler is "a kind of dog". OK?

Now let us talk about Dachshunds and Rotweilers together. So we have "two
kinds". OK?

So surely the plural of "a kind of dog" is "two kinds of dog".

But the Americans want that plural to be "two kinds of dogs". So do they
also want the singular to be "a kind of dogs"?

Cross post to alt.usage.english added to see if anyone there can explain
the anomaly.

Tony Mountifield wrote...

And to mine, but I think there's a degree of distinction in British
English that's been elided in America, where there seems to be an
unbendable rule - if it's countable, it must be plural. Restricting
the Google search to site:.uk shows that where the thing is
countable, sometimes it's singular and sometimes plural. But one of
the sites probably illustrates the nuance: 'Are there different
kinds of stem cell?' It would be quite wrong in my view to write
'cells' there. It seems to depend on the particularity of the thing,
which some syntactician may be able to pin down.

Well to my ears the former sounds correct.

But in the absence of well- respected literature, I did a Google search
for "kinds of" (including the quotes, to keep it as a phrase).

Surprisingly (to me), in the first several pages of results, countable
nouns were pluralised, almost without exception.

Cheers
Tony

No. The internet is international, and so is the IETF (and it even holds
meetings outside of N. America just to enhance its image :-( ).

And the fact that the RFC-Editor actually sits looking out over all the
boats in Marina-del-Rey does not of itself mean that US English is to be
preferred. The RFC-Editor is just another publishing house and hence has a
"house style" which is no more nor less stupid than any other publishing
house (and they are notoriously stupid, in general).

So I repeat my question. Which usage is correct: "how many breeds of dog
are there?" or "how many breeds of dogs are there?"? In English English,
for a start, and preferably with quotations (of either form) from
well-respected literature.

At 15:58:25 on Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk>
wrote in <KIGKDD.IuB@clerew.man.ac.uk>:

Hi, Charles!

Since this relates to an RFC, can we presume that the intention is that
it should adhere to the rules of US English, rather than to those of
Commonwealth English?

If the intention is to write the RFC in Commonwealth English, then both
Webster and the Chicago Manual of Style are irrelevant;  however, if it
is intended to write it in US English, then this is not the appropriate
newsgroup, and alt.usage.english/alt.english.usage would be better
fitted to assist on the usage of US English.

I am having an argument with the RFC-Editor. My co-author had written:

 but some of them may be required in certain types of article.

and she changed it into

  but some of them may be required in certain types of articles.

To justify this, she referred to the Chicago Manual of Style at
 http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Usage/Usage89.html
where it says:

Q. Several times lately I've written or revised copy to change the word in
the prepositional phrase following "kinds of" or "types of" to the
singular from the plural"from "what kinds of cats"" "three types of
errors" to "what kinds of cat," "three types of error." And several times
a client has treated the resulting phrase like an error. I haven?t found
the answer to this usage question in CMOS. What do you think?

A. Your client is right. According to Webster's, "kinds of" takes a plural
if the relevant noun is countable. (Dictionaries are good for this kind of
question.)

Do we believe this? And do we trust Webster?

Sadly, Fowler seems silent on the issue, but it seems totally wrong to me,
certainly on this side of the pond.

So, can anyone find examples of either usage in well-known literature (and
even better in well-known American literature)?