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View Full Version : Correction to grammatical error repeated A LOT in the BB book



HoneymoonBaby
03-06-2004, 10:47 PM
The word "myriad" means "many." Therefore, there are "myriad choices," not "a myriad of choices." Love the book, but I can't believe your editor didn't catch that. It's repeated at least ten times. I had to get it off my chest!

Rachels
03-07-2004, 12:04 AM
Huh. I'm a grammar stickler, too, but hadn't heard this and was curious, so I looked it up. It actually is listed both ways. Here's an interesting blurb about it from dictionary.com:

"Usage Note: Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Myriad myriads of lives.” This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word mrias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun mrias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective mrias was used only in poetry."

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02