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Carpal Tunnel
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I think if you mean the goings-on at the conference or whatever you would use a plural "The proceedings were, to put it mildly, unruly." If on the other hand you mean the book you would use the singular. "Now what did I do with that "Proceedings of the AWAD Conference".
Bingley
Bingley
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stranger
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> not to be taken as a term referring to the book itself.
Indeed that's exactly what I want to do....
I want to add a sentence like:
blablabla. for more insight, see [xxx] in this/these proceedings.
where [xxx] is a citation.
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addict
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not to be taken as a term referring to the book itself
As Faldage says, a book title refers to a single book, no matter how many plurals there may be in it. We would not say "Little Women are a book by Louisa May Alcott". (You can't hear the quotation marks so I didn't write them). When the conference itself is being talked about, as in "The proceedings were chaired by the eminent professor" then (to me) plural is clearly correct. The matter of interest is when "proceedings" (a plural word) is used as shorthand to mean a report (singular) of the proceedings. "Please pass me those/that proceedings, the red one". If my brain were faster than my mouth I would probably avoid the issue by rephrasing, for example with "that copy of the proceedings". Left to itself, my mouth would use the plural form as it sounds less awkward - "Please pass me those proceedings, the red one".
Rod
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old hand
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It's superbly annoying that I had two proceedings(es) out from the library a few weeks ago, and now I've returned them. I would be interested in looking through them and seeing whether the people who compiled them used the singular or plural in their introductions. Maybe during a break this afternoon I will borrow some from a prof.
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old hand
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Okay, I have a few.
#1 has the name of the book referred to in italics, and then a sentence like: "...is printed in this Proceedings" #2 has used "this volume" several times to refer to itself. The last two are reports, or proceedings of workshops. They refer to "This report" but both have "Report of..." in the title.
Does that help, or hinder?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Bean asks: Does that help, or hinder?
Sounds like they're cleverly avoiding the issue.
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old hand
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Sounds like they're cleverly avoiding the issue.
Yes, that too, but then maybe Martin can similarly avoid it!
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stranger
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That's perfect: ``in this volume'' is unambiguous, I'll settle for that, even if doesn't ultimately settle the issue itself (but it seems there's a tendency towards plural.)
Thanks,
Martin
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Sorry I'm late on the scene here, but I've been involved in organising several academic conferences, including the production of the proceedings. No matter which way you use it, referring directly to the volume as "proceedings" is going to seem awkward. But I think that there's very little doubt that if you are going to, then "these proceedings" is the only sensible way of doing so. I have a number of volumes from various conferences, and find that whenever I've composed the non-academic content such as the introduction I've simply avoided using the term at all, even though I never really thought about it before.
So I believe that Martin would be safest doing what he suggests, and so similarly avoid the problem altogether.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Surely this ambiguity arises because of our tendency to abbreviate meanings? The actual proceedings of the symposium or event are done and dusted; but the document is a summary of these proceedings.
As the title of a document of record, ‘Proceedings’ surely is an elision of ‘(XXX of the) Proceedings’ where XXX could be ‘Abstract’, ‘Record’, ‘Summary’ or other similar description, is it not?
It strikes me this is also analogous to our use of other document of record titles, such as Minutes of a meeting. Although the document is a singular item, it is surely more natural speech to refer to this in the plural: “Are these minutes accurate, Ms Sparteye?” Even when the sentence is pointing clearly to just the document rather than its collective contents, we might say: “Are these minutes an accurate record, Ms Sparteye?” This recognises that such a document is a compendium of items so suggests a plural reference, even though we also recognise its status collectively as a single item.
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