Function to Pluralize a common noun?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gary Schuldt
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G

Gary Schuldt

I know this is a long shot, but I'd like to pluralize the name of plant
forms for a caption on a report.

These are stored in table tForm as conifer, fern, grass, heather, etc. The
corresponding captions should read conifers, ferns, grasses, heather.

I am wondering if anyone knows of a cool function that, given the singular
form, would return the plural? I realize it would be some kind of
table-lookup, since there are a lot of exceptions to just "adding an 's' ".

My practical fallback is to add a column tForm.PluralizedName and use that.

Thanks.

Gary
 
I know this is a long shot, but I'd like to pluralize the name of plant
forms for a caption on a report.

These are stored in table tForm as conifer, fern, grass, heather, etc. The
corresponding captions should read conifers, ferns, grasses, heather.

I am wondering if anyone knows of a cool function that, given the singular
form, would return the plural? I realize it would be some kind of
table-lookup, since there are a lot of exceptions to just "adding an 's' ".

My practical fallback is to add a column tForm.PluralizedName and use that.

Thanks.

Gary
Click to expand...

Unless you can limit the suffix possibilities to just a very few
exceptions to adding "s", I would suggest adding a plural field to the
table with the correct plural spelled out.
As you indicate above, the plural of grass is grasses, so there is one
exception, "Heather" has no special plural ending.

If there were just a very few nameable exceptions, you could use an
IIf() statement to get it:

=IIf([PlantName] = "Grass" or [PlantName] = "Moss", [PlantName] &
"es",IIf([PlantName] = "Cactus","Cacti", [PlantName]+"s")

The above will miss "heather", but you could nest another IIF.

Add the field to the table. I think you'll be happier with the
results.
 
Thanks, Fred,

I took the table route, and it is working just fine, since I already have
one and only one row for each singular name, it's a natural thing to do.

Gary

fredg said:
I know this is a long shot, but I'd like to pluralize the name of plant
forms for a caption on a report.

These are stored in table tForm as conifer, fern, grass, heather, etc. The
corresponding captions should read conifers, ferns, grasses, heather.

I am wondering if anyone knows of a cool function that, given the singular
form, would return the plural? I realize it would be some kind of
table-lookup, since there are a lot of exceptions to just "adding an 's' ".

My practical fallback is to add a column tForm.PluralizedName and use that.

Thanks.

Gary
Click to expand...

Unless you can limit the suffix possibilities to just a very few
exceptions to adding "s", I would suggest adding a plural field to the
table with the correct plural spelled out.
As you indicate above, the plural of grass is grasses, so there is one
exception, "Heather" has no special plural ending.

If there were just a very few nameable exceptions, you could use an
IIf() statement to get it:

=IIf([PlantName] = "Grass" or [PlantName] = "Moss", [PlantName] &
"es",IIf([PlantName] = "Cactus","Cacti", [PlantName]+"s")

The above will miss "heather", but you could nest another IIF.

Add the field to the table. I think you'll be happier with the
results.
Click to expand...
 
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