A caller from Imperial Beach, California has a punctuation question: Dr. Tei Fu Chen and his wife, Dr. Oi Lin Chen own and operate a large, multinational herbal food company. In company literature, the two doctors are referred to in several ways. The caller wants to know which is the best choice.
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[audio: http://feeds.waywordradio.org/~r/awwwpodcast/~5/380149809/080901-AWWW-pair-o-docs-paradox.mp3 ]
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Which of the following would you pick, and why?
1. The owners, Doctors Chens, are experts in the field.
2. The owners, Doctor Chens, are experts in the field.
3. The owners, Doctors Chen, are experts in the field.
4. The owners, the Doctors Chen, are experts in the field.
See if your answer agrees with the one Martha and Grant decided on.
Martha's followup question seems to have more legit answers than were listed.
She said:
freight
weights
How about:
weighty
heighth
heights
That's off the top. There may be more.
Hi, Joe -- More discussion of that here from folks who also thought of more.
But "heighth"???
How about The owners, Dr and Dr Chen?
In graduate school, we had the Doctors Hale in the department and the Doctors Plummer on campus. Beyond the original question, we had to refer to them in conversation. It finally became natural to say "Doctor Missus Hale" or "Doctor Mister Hale". It is starting to get lengthy like German, but was the most efficient we could come up with.
Emmett Redd