{"id":1612,"date":"2014-08-12T11:02:55","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T17:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=1612"},"modified":"2020-11-25T10:54:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:54:18","slug":"people-vs-persons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/definitions\/people-vs-persons\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>People<\/em> vs. <em>Persons<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The noun <em>person<\/em> has two plurals: <em>persons<\/em> and <em>people<\/em>. Most people don\u2019t use <em>persons<\/em>, but the sticklers say there are times when we should. \u201cWhen we say <em>persons<\/em>,\u201d says Wilson Follett\u2019s <em>Modern American Usage<\/em>, \u201cwe are thinking, or ought to be, of <em>ones<\/em>\u2014individuals with identities; whereas when we say <em>people<\/em> we should mean a large group, an indefinite and anonymous mass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The traditional rule is that <em>persons<\/em> is used for either an exact or a small number. So we might estimate that a hundred<em> people <\/em>were there. Or if we know the exact number, we\u2019d say ninety-eight<em> persons <\/em>were there.<\/p>\n<p>As for \u201ca small number,\u201d how small is \u201csmall\u201d? In <em>Words on Words<\/em>, John B. Bremner suggests fewer than fifty. Theodore M. Bernstein concurs, saying in <em>The Careful Writer<\/em> that <em>fifty people<\/em> is acceptable. To Bernstein, <em>two people<\/em> is nearly unthinkable but <em>4,381 persons<\/em> is \u201cquite proper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the language moves on. In <em>A Dictionary of Modern American Usage<\/em>, Bryan A. Garner calls the <em>persons-people <\/em>distinction \u201cpedantic.\u201d Garner says that <em>twelve persons on the jury<\/em> \u201csounds stuffy\u201d and that most Americans today would say <em>people<\/em> instead. Roy H. Copperud agrees. In <em>A Dictionary of Usage and Style<\/em> he dismisses the grammatical superiority of <em>persons <\/em> as \u201csuperstition,\u201d a law that \u201cusage has in fact repealed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Because <em>persons<\/em> sounds aloof and clinical, the word still thrives in legal, official, or formal usage. A hotel chain\u2019s website offers \u201coptions for three and more persons.\u201d Elevators carry signs saying, \u201cOccupancy by more than eight persons is unlawful.\u201d The Department of Justice has a database called the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.<\/p>\n<p>A more timely debate these days would be <em>people <\/em>vs. <em>folks<\/em>. Traditionalists regard <em>folks<\/em> with suspicion and contempt. Bernstein says, \u201c<em>Folks <\/em>is a casualism \u2026 not suitable for general straightforward writing.\u201d Bremner calls it \u201cdeliberately folksy\u201d and \u201ccorny in formal speech and writing.\u201d But judging by its growing popularity and acceptance in this informal age, <em>folks <\/em>will probably be synonymous with <em>people <\/em>in another ten years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The noun person has two plurals: persons and people. Most people don\u2019t use persons, but the sticklers say there are times when we should. \u201cWhen we say persons,\u201d says Wilson Follett\u2019s Modern American Usage, \u201cwe are thinking, or ought to be, of ones\u2014individuals with identities; whereas when we say people we should mean a large [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-effective-writing","category-singular-vs-plural"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}