Hello,

the subject says it already: does one say

in this proceedings

or rather
in these proceedings


where with proceedings I mean the book containing a number of contributions, etc.

Thanks,
Martin

Grüß dich Martin,

I would go for 'these proceedings' e.g:

Foreign help has fequently been sought for these proceedings.

'This proceedings' is wrong.

Greetings and welcome, Martin.

I am unfamiliar with "proceedings" meaning a book. Can you further elucidate?

When you take all the papers presented at a conference and make them into a book for later reference, the whole shebang is generally referred to as "The Proceedings of the XXII Conference on Blahblahblah-ation of blah-uscular blah-forms" or whatever. It's listed in the library catalogues as such, as well.

Well,

the most common usage of ``proceedings'' in my
trade (computer science, but it applies, I would assume,
to other sciences as well..) is to denote the book
containing all the papers, articles, and contributions to
a conference. The book is (or are?) the conference proceedings.

Martin

Thanks, Bean and Martin for clearing that up. Even though it's a single compilation, my ear still tells me plural - but that's no guarantee it's correct.

So, Bean, would you use the singular or the plural?

I would be inclined to use the plural, because that's the way I've seen it used. But the book is a single object, so it's kind of singular. (Kind of singular?!) Yeah, I think I would go with plural, though.

I think that The Proceedings refers to the goings on at the conference. Its use in the title of the book is merely an indication of what the book is about and not to be taken as a term referring to the book itself.

In my post I assumed that litigation, i.e. legal proceedings was implied.
Re. the 'record of a meeting/conference' meaning:
Should 'proceedings' be interchangeable with 'papers' or perhaps documentation?

...the book containing all the papers, articles, and contributions to a conference. The book is (or are?) the conference proceedings.
Proceedings : onward movement ; business conducted by a court, assembly,or society. (OED)

Seems to me that the book would proceed onward, or as a result of, the confab. So proceedings would apper to be correct.
Nice to be with the majority for a change! (so far!)

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

> 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.

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

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.

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?

Bean asks: Does that help, or hinder?

Sounds like they're cleverly avoiding the issue.

Sounds like they're cleverly avoiding the issue.

Yes, that too, but then maybe Martin can similarly avoid it!

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

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.

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.