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Grammar Girl here, I'm Minyon Focardy.

This week I have a quick and dirty tip about the plural of Batman,

and a medium-middle about why even smart people struggle with Shakespeare.

Let's get started.

Michelle, who's a language arts teacher in Culver City, asked,

what is the plural of Batman?

And that's a good question.

Many people have asked me this over the last few years.

Do you talk about seven Batman's or seven Batman?

Well, I think of Batman as a name, because you'd say,

hey, there's Batman, not hey, there's a Batman,

or hey, there's the Batman.

And Batman is usually capitalized, like a name is capitalized.

So we usually make names plural by just adding an S to the end.

So like you'd say there are seven mics at the party,

or seven emiles in your history class,

you'd say there have been seven Batman's over the years.

That's the grammatically correct way to make a name plural.

But when I explain it that way, a lot of people don't seem to like the answer.

So I get the sense that Batman is more popular,

or maybe the people who like Batman are just more vocal.

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