Gleanings from Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark. This will be an interesting read for copyeditors; for others, it's probably TMI. A quick internet search didn't yield a plural of "gin and tonic" written in stone. I found "gins and tonic" "gin and tonics" "gins and tonics" and even "gin and tonic" as the plural of "gin and tonic" as in "I'll have two gin and tonic.""Mark Twain, famously defensive of his right to punctuate exactly how he wanted to, purportedly grew weary of criticism of his sometimes unconventional choices and published a piece of writing that was wholly without punctuation marks, but with a string of commas, semicolons, and other marks at the bottom of the text, along with a note telling the reader to put them where he or she pleased since Twain clearly couldn't be trusted with them. (The sources that mention this piece report it variously as a letter or as a short story; I have yet to find the Twain composition that matches this description.)"
"... Twain was excoriating a proofreader, a professional figure who frequently met with his wrath. Ninety percent of the "labor & vexation" of writing, Twain insisted, "consists in annihilating their ignorant & purposeless punctuation & restoring my own."
[Twain]: "Yesterday Mr. Hall wrote that the printer's proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me... & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray."
"Samuel Taylor Coleridge lavished praise on the literary mastery displayed by Daniel Defoe for his use of a semicolon in Robinson Crusoe - a semicolon which, it turns out, doesn't appear in the majority of editions of the book. "In effect," one critic summed up, "Coleridge has chosen to praise the work of a typesetter contemporary to himself, not Defoe." So in terms of exegesis of a book, there are a lot of unknowns that render it hard to make claims about what an author's intentions really were."
"One night, after an especially exhausting conference in the city, I walked up and ordered "two gins and tonic." The person manning the kiosk was briefly speechless at being confronted with such an idiot as myself who couldn't even order properly. Finally, perhaps after considering the possibility I might be too drunk already to serve, she asked me if I meant "two gin and tonics." I opted not to go into the pluralization rule..."
"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme.
The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.---Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Ordering 'two gins and tonic' sounds like you just want a double gin and tonic, rather than ordering two separate drinks, methinks
ReplyDeleteCould this be considered a compound phrase? In that case the "and" makes "gin and tonic" a single term, so the plural would be gin and tonics. A similar example would be black and tans (a beer cocktail, among other things).
ReplyDeleteClearly the correct plural form is "Two G'n Ts please"
ReplyDeleteThe alleged Twain work matches the description of Timothy Dexter's A Pickle for the Knowing Ones:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Dexter#Writing
Perhaps this got misattributed to Twain, like how the "baby shoes" story gets attributed to Hemingway.
Interesting thought, Emily.
DeleteThe plural of "gin and tonic" is "hangover".
ReplyDeleteFrom the Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
ReplyDelete"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds."
Reminds me of the old Onion headline: "William Safire orders Two Whoppers Junior"
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think you'll do then?
ReplyDeleteI bet they'll shoot down the plane
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again
Credit to Elton John
The reason it must be, "gin and tonics," is that there are several varieties of gin (London Dry, Old Tom, etc) that were indeed mixed together in various 19th century recipes. Thus, "gins and tonic," would call for such a mixture.
ReplyDelete"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme.
ReplyDeleteThe drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Excellent. I've added this to the body of the post. Thank you.
Delete