Sans, singulier ou pluriel ?
The rule is easy to remember. To know whether the noun X that follows sans is singular or plural, it suffices to ask whether, if there was any X, there would be one or more.So, for example, we should say ..
Unités binaires
We often see mistakes in the binary units in French, for example, things such as:
Minuscule ou miniscule ?
Once in a while, a translator uses “miniscule” instead of “minuscule” and I correct it, as the “miniscule” form is completely wrong in French. A Google search on French websites gives less than 2% occurrence of “miniscule” compared to “minuscule”.
Names of peoples
In French, peoples’ names start with a capital letter. So we should write :
Le dit & la dite
The forms “ledit xxx” and “ladite xxx” are commonly used in contracts (french translation of “said xxx”).
It should be remembered that the correct form is “ledit”, “ladite” and not “le dit”, “la dite”.
Des standards pas standard
When used as an adjective, “standard” does not take the plural “s”, whereas it takes it when used as a noun. The reason is that “standard” has been borrowed from the English language.
0 houses, 0 maison, 1,9 houses et 1,9 maison
For some strange reason, the “starting point” of plural is different in different languages.
In English, plural starts “right after 1”, but in French it only starts at 2.
So we should say “1,99 mètre” but “2 mètres”.