What is the preferred choice: Alternates or Alternatives? I guess I am looking more for a consensus than a correct or logical answer. I have always used Alternatives, but my clients often want me to change it because they use Alternates on the drawings.
The PRM and MF04 use the term “Alternates”.
I don’t know the history behind the decision, but our firm has used alternatives for many years.
My recollection from readings is that Alternates is common in the US, and Alternatives is common in Canada. However, I can’t cite a source. Are there any Canadian’s out there to confirm?
Per my trusty (but dusty) copy of 1988 MasterFormat:
Section (way back then) 01030 - Alternates / Alternatives
Commentary in the margin reads:
“NOTE: Use either “Alternate,” a common United States term, or “Alternative,” a common Canadian term; not both.”
Got this from an old grammar source-- may be it helps.
"The writers of the dictionaries I consulted agree that the American sense of “alternate” is
quite recent, mainly within the 20th century, and increasingly from about the 1960s.
Some traditionalists hold that alternative/alternatively should be used only
in situations where the number of choices involved is exactly two, because of
the word’s historical relation to Latin. H.W.
Fowler, among others, has considered this restriction a fetish. The Usage
Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary is evenly divided on the issue, with 49 percent
accepting the sentence “Of the three alternatives, the first is the least
distasteful.”
Alternative is also sometimes used to refer to a variant or substitute in
cases where there is no element of choice involved, as in “We will do our best
to secure alternative employment for employees displaced by the closing of the
factory.” This sentence is unacceptable to 60 percent of the Usage Panel, who say
that alternative should not be confused with alternate. Correct usage requires The
class will meet on alternate (not alternative) Tuesdays.
I recommend using alternative when you could substitute “or instead of that.” Use
alternate when you mean “occuring in successive turns.”
Using “alternate” as a noun bothered me for many years, until I realized that it was probably a shortened form of the term “Alternate Bid”; such truncation is not unknown or unacceptable in English, although I can’t think of another example offhand.
SpecLink uses “Alternative,” perhaps because of a Canadian’s involvement in writing its textbase, or perhaps because of BSD’s effort to do things a better way, even if it flies in the face of longstanding tradition. As a SpecLink user, I change it to “Alternate,” bowing to US custom, although I would prefer the correct noun form.
I would support an effort to change the US standard to “alternative,” but I doubt if such a movement would catch on, given the hidebound conservatism of the AEC community…
Stop thinking in terms of a verb or adjective and start thinking in terms of a noun. According to the following dictionaries, all based on American usage, “alternate” is the preferred choice. (It’s also shorter, long a CSI standard choice). I think the Cambridge Dictionary explains it most clearly. Note that the American Heritage dictionary uses “alternative” to define “alternate”.
Mirriam-Webster: one that substitutes for
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. NOUN: (-nt)1. A person acting in the place of another; a substitute. 2. An alternative
Cambridge Dictionary of American English - alternate: noun [C]. one that can take the place of another. David was too sick to attend, so Janet served as his alternate
Get a life!
David Combs,
I had just reached for my 1988 MF when your response arrived in my email, that’s exactly where I knew it was related about Alternates/Alternatives.
Lynn,
Great response, we always need to look in contemporary dictionaries of the US common use of language. I think we sometimes forget who reads (or who is supposed to be reading) our specifications. Looking at Fowler, looking at traditionalists and heritage of words to their origin can be interesting - but it is common usage as defined in contemporary dictionaries that is best used in what we produce.
William
Enough already! It is “Alternates”
If shorter and more common is indeed better, how about “Options”?
How about allowing the alternate/alternative use either? That should drive the obsessive, compulsives over the edge.
Or into an alternate/alternative life style…