Disputatio:Praemium Oscar

This should be Praemia Academiae, as in English it is Academy Awards. Praemium refers to only one award. -Kedemus

Yeah, my inclination would be to keep it in the plural, but my expertise is in Latin, not encyclopedia writing. And note that even the english article is listed in the singular! This being the case, perhaps you and I are wrong this time. --Iustinus 06:30, 6 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

(1) Unless a singular form is impossible or too bizarre for comfort, dictionaries always define the singular, not the plural. If Vicipaedia's lemma is Praemia Academiae, its correlative articles might want to have the same form (e.g., Praemia Nobeliana and Praemia Emmy), but most lexicographers would prefer to use the singular form for the lemma because in each case a singular form is available and in common use.

(2) "In English it is Academy Awards."—Yes & no; it is & it isn't: the phrase Academy Awards is a trademark, but each of the academy's awards is an Academy Award. The Chicago Manual of Style—followed by most academic presses in the United States—specifies (boldface added):

<<Names of awards and prizes are capitalized:

Nobel Prize in physics; Nobel Peace Prize; Nobel Prize winners

Pulitzer Prize in fiction

Academy Award; Oscar; Emmy Award

International Music Scholarship

Heywood Broun Memorial Award

Laetare Medal

Guggenheim Fellowship (but Guggenheim grant)

National Merit scholarships>>

If, as the last example shows, Academy Awards didn't have the protection of being a trademark, standard American academic style would be to lowercase the plural form: awards (or, in full, Academy awards). That would be consistent with general American style, which prescribes, for example, Red River and Green River, but the Red and Green rivers. And of course all by itself, the short form is lowercased, as the academy and the award and the awards. U.S. and British styles differ on that point: here in America, most presses would print Queen Elizabeth but the queen. Chicago calls our style "the down style," and implies that it's gaining momentum among publishers. IacobusAmor 11:04, 6 Iunii 2007 (UTC)

Of course, as I have argued elsewhere (but can't remember where), it may be germaine that Latin dictionaries are much more comfortable with listing lemmata in their plural forms. Most obvious is that many ethnonyms are always listed in the plural, even if the singular form is known or can be reliably guessed. --Iustinus 11:56, 6 Iunii 2007 (UTC)