Richard Bowen on The Plural of Appendix
Richard Bowen rarely has anything interesting to say. And this may not be an exception.
Do you think that the plural of appendix is appendices or appendixes?
Well, according to the Oxford English dictionary BOTH appendices and appendixes can be used as the plural of appendix. But many people still ask "which version is correct though?" or "why should I use one rather than the other?".
Richard Bowen's take on it ...
This Richard Bowen is English and has lived for 44 years thinking that the plural of appendix is appendices - which turns out to be only half the story. Appendixes sounds wrong to my ear. I'm not alone. A few searches on Google revealed the following (in case you don't know, Google tells you how many web pages contain the word or phrase you search for) ...
| Word | All sites | UK sites | All except UK sites |
| appendices | 17,300,000 | 2,030,000 | 15,270,000 |
| appendixes | 5,450,000 | 115,000 | 5,335,000 |
| RATIO ~ -ices:-ixes | 3.17:1 | 17.65:1 | 2.86:1 |
So there we have it. Both appendices and appendixes are correct for the plural of appendix but fewer people will think you made a mistake if you use appendices. Who cares?
