On Mon, 11 May 2009 13:19:50 +0100, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)"
<mail@p...> wrote:

>On Mon, 11 May 2009 12:28:13 +0100, Tom Anderson <twic@u...>
>wrote:
>
>>[crossposted to alt.usage.english!]
>>
>>On Sun, 10 May 2009, mat wrote:
>>
>>> Probably slightly off topic, but hopefully someone can give me some
>>> insight to best practice.
>>> My problem is I've got an element that's name is an irregular noun,
>>> in this case "series"
>>> So all the "series" elements need to be put inside another element,
>>> currently I'm using "seriesList" because the plural of series is
>>> series:
>>>
>>> <seriesList>
>>>  <series>...</series>
>>>  <series>...</series>
>>>  <series>...</series>
>>> </seriesList>
>>>
>>> A colleague told me that this may be considered bad practice in
>>> naming XML elements.
>>> Can someone with more experience with XML let me know if my solution
>>> is alright?
>>
>>I can't claim a lot of experience with XML, but seriesList does look a bit 
>>clunky. I am tempted to suggest serieses as the name of the outer element!
>>
>>Can you call series something else? There are other words that mean much 
>>the same thing - list, sequence, succession, chain, run - all of which 
>>have normal plurals. Or is series a word from your domain vocabulary that 
>>can't be changed?
>>
>I've never created XML stuff, but from work in other contexts I'd
>suggest <series_set> or <series_group>. 

The OED has these quotations:

"1765 W. WARD Grammar IV. iv. 167 Several participles cannot
conveniently be used so as to affect every part of long serieses
of words immediately."

"1797 Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3) XVIII. 514/1 Two serieses are
completed in the exact time of a lunation."

Apparently the plural could be spelt (that's not Triticum spelta)
"serieses" or "series's" in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Not that I'm recommending it for use today. Your solution looks
good.

-- 
James