Table of Content vs Table of Contents
October 30th, 2009 by YD
Apart from the fact that convention is clearly “Table of Contents”, is there a grammatical reasoning for “Table of Content” vs “Table of Contents”?
I guess it comes down to whether the noun “content” is one that can be counted, i.e. several contents, or not.
My instinct is that in fact, content is not an enumerable noun, i.e. it should be Table of Content. But does that mean that MS Word, LaTeX and all other Desktop Publishers out there are just wrong?
YD
This entry was posted
on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 6:59 am and is filed under Grammar.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
The sense of “content” used in “online content” or “content producers” is not enumerable. But the phrase “table of contents” uses it in the older sense of “things contained”, as in “the contents of his pockets,” equivalent to “the things contained in his pockets.” “Table of contents” = “table of things contained in this book.”
There are many contents. So it should be “Table of Contents”. Always it should be in plural form.
See here also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_contents
My house may only be one place, but it’s still “the premises”, not “the premise”.
“Content” as a mass noun is a very recent phenomenon.
If referring to more than one table of content, then it follows that “table” should be pluralized to read “tables of content”, as may be found in a series of publications addressing the same subject.
There is NO case in which content”s” is correct. We don’t fill a glass with waters, we donlt fill a balloon with airs. In a book, there are letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, . . . Etcetera (not etcetera”s”). Together they form the ONE thing between the front and back covers: content.
It is ‘Table of Content’!!!