Duty calls

I love Sugru, and I admire and am grateful to Jane, its onlie true begetter, but when someone on the internet is wrong, duty calls.

Dear the Jane

See, that's weird.

Scientific names, like the names of people, just don't take a definite article. They are what linguists call strong proper names. So while I admire and appreciate your giving some attention to Pilea peperomoides, I find it odd to keep reading about "the Pilea ...".

Ideally, scientific names are shown in italics, and always without the definite article. So you can say "a Pilea" and "the Chinese money plant, pancake plant, lefse plant, or missionary plant". I got that last from Wikipedia, and it is just one reason to give a scientific name, so we all know what we're talking about.

As you can imagine, I've written about this sort of thing on my own website: If you're interested, start here: Eagles point the way.

Anyway, thanks for the article. I had no idea Pilea was a relative of stinging nettle, and thanks to for Sugru.

All the best

Jeremy

I know; I just can't help myself.