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I noticed GW are using “dice” in the singular form. “Roll one dice”.

At first I thought this sloppy editing and poor copywriting but a quick Google search reveals “die” and “dice” can now both be used as “singular” because of “the way language evolves”. Apparently if enough people say something wrong long enough it becomes right. Fair enough I guess.

To me it’s just confusing. It doesn’t solve any problems with misunderstanding, it just makes it harder. When I read “dice”, I think of two or more automatically. I rarely or never have the other misunderstanding, that would be mistaking “die”, the thing you roll, with “die”, what happens when you get shot in the head. So reading the below rules crosses wires in my brain a bit and feels cumbersome to read for me.

What are your thoughts? Is “dice” common as a singular amoung many of you? I know it is with non-gamers but I’ve rarely heard tabletop gamers say “dice” in the singular which makes me wonder why GW are doing this.

I didn't know "die" meant the singular of "dice" until I started playing 40k as a wean.

I recently got some friends into D&D and they were baffled when I referred to a singular dice as a die.

GW really should use "die" as the singular. In normal speech it rarely matters because context usually tells you what someone means. In a ruleset for a wargame it's really, really important to distinguish between the two.

GW have a long history of using 'dice' as the singular. Here's a quote from the first edition Space Hulk rulebook from 1989. It refers to keeping track of the Command Points you get as the Marine player. This was before Captains turned up, so the maximum amount of CPs you ever got was 6 – in other words, there's no way they could be referring to multiple dice.

Space Hulk rulebook, first edition wrote:When you haven't spent any CPs, put the dice off to one side; when you spend one or more CPs, turn the dice's face to show the total points you have spent[...]

I'm pretty sure I used the word the same way as a kid. But yon days of yore have passed unto the mists of time, and memory may not serve as well as I wish.

Snugiraffe wrote:
GW have a long history of using 'dice' as the singular. Here's a quote from the first edition Space Hulk rulebook from 1989. It refers to keeping track of the Command Points you get as the Marine player. This was before Captains turned up, so the maximum amount of CPs you ever got was 6 – in other words, there's no way they could be referring to multiple dice.

Space Hulk rulebook, first edition wrote:When you haven't spent any CPs, put the dice off to one side; when you spend one or more CPs, turn the dice's face to show the total points you have spent[...]

I'm pretty sure I used the word the same way as a kid. But yon days of yore have passed unto the mists of time, and memory may not serve as well as I wish.

Interesting, but if they were doing it back then they were just using English wrong. From what I could understand on Google it's only recently been accepted as "correct". Or "equally as correct" as using "die".


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Slipspace wrote:
GW really should use "die" as the singular. In normal speech it rarely matters because context usually tells you what someone means. In a ruleset for a wargame it's really, really important to distinguish between the two.

I agree 100%. Not only to avoid confusion but also it's just cumbersome to read.

Snugiraffe wrote:
I'm pretty sure I used the word the same way as a kid. But yon days of yore have passed unto the mists of time, and memory may not serve as well as I wish.

Not just you, i threw A DICE when I was a little un and that's longer ago than I care to admit.
Truth is I still use 'dice' as a singular (as in, "pass us a dice, mate"). I suspect what we're seeing is people learning formal English and then meeting us classless native slobs who are actually writing the rules

can't say this has ever bothered me, I get the point being made but I have yet to see a single GW publication with a level of drafting that supports any reading at this level of accuracy

I've seen other documents that usually include something along the lines of "any singular term shall include the plural and any plural term shall include the singular unless specifically stated otherwise" among a page of similar statements near the beginning

I've also seen rules that allow you to "re-roll" dice without defining what they actually mean

to the point of having someone argue that when they re-rolled they got both the old and the new result

which lasted until I returned the favour the turn after

Pilum wrote:
us classless native slobs

If my poor nan were to read that now – she tried soo hard to make us all be propahly educayted, dontcha kneow. She took the art of being middle class to new heights (as in being an obviously superior breed to everyone else, in the face of all evidence). But the rest of us fell to consorting with the plebs. And rolling a dice or two

They also say "Indexes" and "Codexes" rather than Indices and Codices.

Given all the psudo-Latin they put in 40k, I find this quite silly.

leopard wrote:
can't say this has ever bothered me, I get the point being made but I have yet to see a single GW publication with a level of drafting that supports any reading at this level of accuracy

I've seen other documents that usually include something along the lines of "any singular term shall include the plural and any plural term shall include the singular unless specifically stated otherwise" among a page of similar statements near the beginning

I've also seen rules that allow you to "re-roll" dice without defining what they actually mean

to the point of having someone argue that when they re-rolled they got both the old and the new result

which lasted until I returned the favour the turn after

1. "this level of accuracy"? I don't belive it's a particularly high bar tbh.

2. re-roll just means you pick up the die/dice (see what I did there?) and roll it again. What's there to define? I'm not trying to be snarky I'm just genuinely curious what that persons argument could be!


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They also say "Indexes" and "Codexes" rather than Indices and Codices.

Given all the psudo-Latin they put in 40k, I find this quite silly.

Yeah - maybe they don't have the best copywriters/editors in the world! Or maybe they're doing that "let's appeal to the lowest common denominator thing"?

In any case, I find that sometimes rules are worded pretty poorly. I read them four times and think "wtf are they talking about?". Only on the fifth time to get it and be like, "why on earth would you write something so simple in such a difficult-to-understand way?".

1. agree its a somewhat low bar, they do manage to keep tripping over it though

2. "re-roll" usually has the definition indicating if its a 2d6 roll if one or both get re-rolled, has a bit on "cannot re-roll a re-roll" etc.

what he was trying to argue was "I rolled this result which is a partial hit, I'm re-rolling it - it came up as a solid hit so I now have a partial hit and a solid hit as nowhere does it say the first result is discarded"

there is a line between rules in readable English and moving into lawyerspeak but I think having a technical writer on the writing team is not a bad idea

I didn't know until I started playing 40k - used to think the expression (and the DS9 episode) 'the die is cast' referred to die cast molding somehow (I don't know how, I was young, I just knew the phrase from die cast toy cars and took it from there). I guess I would prefer GW used 'die' because I'm the kind of person who likes to say 'codices' because it makes me feel fancy - then again, perhaps there's something to using 'dice' as a kind of keyword that's never used in any other sense in the rulebook, unlike 'die' which crops up in the death sense with alarming regularity on the tabletop (more often for my troops than the enemy's, but that's just me). Plus, using 'die' to specify a single die, while correct, also seems a little bit like it might be misunderstood compared to 'a single dice' - there's no questioning what 'a single dice' means in practical terms, whereas 'die' could be overlooked (or a typo) if it's the only part of the text specifying a single one be used for whatever case you're talking about.

Single is die, plural is dice. Don't go to GW for grammatical tips, they'll use whichever form of a word they think most of their userbase will understand.

leopard wrote:
1. agree its a somewhat low bar, they do manage to keep tripping over it though

2. "re-roll" usually has the definition indicating if its a 2d6 roll if one or both get re-rolled, has a bit on "cannot re-roll a re-roll" etc.

what he was trying to argue was "I rolled this result which is a partial hit, I'm re-rolling it - it came up as a solid hit so I now have a partial hit and a solid hit as nowhere does it say the first result is discarded"

there is a line between rules in readable English and moving into lawyerspeak but I think having a technical writer on the writing team is not a bad idea

Yeah I think that guy was just cheating. I'm not a lawyer, I'm a games developer, but I have done some copywriting.

I would counter him with, "that's not a re-roll, that's an extra-roll". The re-part implies the first is discarded. If you redo something, the implication is you scarp it and start again. If you repaint a miniature, you don't get two miniatures.


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Charax wrote:
Single is die, plural is dice. Don't go to GW for grammatical tips, they'll use whichever form of a word they think most of their userbase will understand.

That is what I thought until this morning. As per the OP, apparently if enough people get it wrong for long enough, it becomes "right". I don't like it personally, to me it's just needlessly confusing. But *shrug*.

Kind off-topic here, but one I always get confused is 'phenomenon' and 'phenomena'. To me it feels like phenomena should be the singular and phenomenon the plural. But it's the other way around.

No dice! It's die until the day I die!

Seriously, kids these days...

 The Pig-Faced Orc wrote:
At first I thought this sloppy editing and poor copywriting but a quick Google search reveals “die” and “dice” can now both be used as “singular” because of “the way language evolves”. Apparently if enough people say something wrong long enough it becomes right. Fair enough I guess.

Yes, that's how language works. It's not so much wrong as it is change and adaptation for technical or social reasons to coin new words or use existing ones outside their strict, existing definitions. In this case it may well be gamer lingo that is so ingrained in GW's writers, who presumably come from the same scene, that dice as singular of dice feels natural to them to such a degree that they adopt it in their publications and therefore only codify it more, pass it on to a wider audience and effectively campaign for it to be added to dictionaries because of its spreading use.

If that shocks you, consider that we are referring to non-cubic random number generators as dice even though we really shouldn't. But we chose outrage over textbook definitions. We're rebellious like that.

 Daia T'Nara wrote:
I didn't know until I started playing 40k - used to think the expression (and the DS9 episode) 'the die is cast' referred to die cast molding somehow (I don't know how, I was young, I just knew the phrase from die cast toy cars and took it from there).

The plural of that die is dies, apparently, and therefore completely different from the cubic random number generator we know and love. You could call it a case of mistaken die-dentity.

I think the guy was just being his usual self and pushing it to make a point

same bod under 40k 5th, you know where there is a 50-50 if you disagree on something pointed out he could claim a 2++ invulnerable save in the open, its not something the rules cover so its a 50-50 dice off

he was using that as an example of not comprehensive rules and not actually trying to claim it

though I admit we did run it for two turns just to make a rules lawyer who liked to attach himself to games brain explode

Datum and data is another example.

I think general usage is to say a “piece of data” or similar rather than datum other than in niche uses. In my line of work we still use datum for specific things.

But, yeah, the thing with a living language is that it changes all the time, and dictionaries primarily reflect usage rather than dictate definitions.

 Geifer wrote:
Yes, that's how language works. It's not so much wrong as it is change and adaptation for technical or social reasons to coin new words ...

Aash wrote:
But, yeah, the thing with a living language is that it changes all the time, and dictionaries primarily reflect usage rather than dictate definitions.

I can totally understand that back in 1600 when books were a luxury to the common pleb, let alone mass communication and The Internet, kids started working in factories at 12, and the due to the lack of cheap, fast communication, accents differed so greatly from one side of the country to the other that it was almost a different language. Naturally, then, language evolves.

Nowdays almost everyone has the entirety of human knowledge in their back-pocket. Making simple grammatical mistakes out of ignorance until they become "right" feels crap to me.

Yes, it's not important. Yes, it's going to happen whether I like it or not. I get it.

Now get off my lawn you crazy kids.



....

Word definitions change via slang and common usage errors.

I'm old enough to remember when ain't was considered to be very incorrect. Today, the Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn't even note it as informal or slang. Same is true for dice. M-W defines it as as the noun die, which is a cube with the numbers 1 to 6 on it's faces.

IIRC when I first encountered this in 40K (back in the 90's) it was explained to me that "dice" is both singular and plural in British English. Most of us who have posted are using American English which uses "die/dice".

I don't know why people are singling gw out for using 'dice' as singular. Read the instructions for most family games and it will tell you to roll the dice when there is only one in the game. Most people who are not into board games or table top games (which is the majority of people) wouldn't know that 'die' is the correct term. GW rule books are written with brand new hobbyists in mind, and so from that perspective using dice rather than die makes sense.

 JamesY wrote:
I don't know why people are singling gw out for using 'dice' as singular. Read the instructions for most family games and it will tell you to roll the dice when there is only one in the game. Most people who are not into board games or table top games (which is the majority of people) wouldn't know that 'die' is the correct term. GW rule books are written with brand new hobbyists in mind, and so from that perspective using dice rather than die makes sense.

I think that's a UK thing, or at the very least, a not-America thing.

Here in 'Murica, die is the singular of dice just in general.

Hey man I can see your determined to hold down the fort when it comes to language but its really fine. Like you youreself said language evolves. It doesnt' matter if you use the right words or the right punctuation (so long as everyone understands what you mean).

Unless your', just, one of, those grammer snobs the, sort of person who get's annoyed, over where you place commas and apostrophise. You have to understand that language is like a birthday card its' the thought that counts'.

Irregardless you're complaints isnt' even correct in this case. In fact your putting the carrot before the horse and as we both know that's an illogical fallacy. You want Games' Workshop to use die but die is a verb. You cant' roll a verb now can you? So it only makes sense for them to use dies instead.

This way everyone is clear on what everyone means'.

 The Pig-Faced Orc wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:
GW have a long history of using 'dice' as the singular. Here's a quote from the first edition Space Hulk rulebook from 1989. It refers to keeping track of the Command Points you get as the Marine player. This was before Captains turned up, so the maximum amount of CPs you ever got was 6 – in other words, there's no way they could be referring to multiple dice.

Space Hulk rulebook, first edition wrote:When you haven't spent any CPs, put the dice off to one side; when you spend one or more CPs, turn the dice's face to show the total points you have spent[...]

I'm pretty sure I used the word the same way as a kid. But yon days of yore have passed unto the mists of time, and memory may not serve as well as I wish.

Interesting, but if they were doing it back then they were just using English wrong. From what I could understand on Google it's only recently been accepted as "correct". Or "equally as correct" as using "die".

.... language of all kinds evolves, english more than most because it is used by so many people as a second language. And now with the international exposure of social media and meme culture, language is evolving at a speed not seen before.

if people never 'used it wrong' in the first place, it would never evolve in the latter case. It's the weight of progressive use change that causes it to 'become right'.


"grammar nazis" are the linguistic equivalent of creationists, acting as if evolution doesn't happen and furious when it does. If you want a static language, use the dead languages that science uses for that very reason.


This is the consequence of using a living evolving practical tool as an instructional system and why science was written in ancient greek and latin for so long.


English used to use they as a singular, then it went out of fashion and now it's back again. Ye, the and thou are all evolved from the same word.

English used to:

Not end a sentence with a preposition (due to hold overs from latin)
Not Start Sentences with Conjunctions
Not split infinitives

AWESOME used to be in terrified awe
AWFUL used to be something worthy of positive awe
NICE was from the old french to mean foolish or weak

There are plenty of examples of words that have changed or even mean the opposite of what they used to.

die/dice is no more special than any other and like any other will continue to be understood through context.

As far as I know, the original poster is doomed to disappointment.

Because, as others have noted, GW has been using the word 'dice' as both singular and plural for long enough that Americans were just being told "That's British English for you" for about the last twenty five year.

It's also worth noting that dreadsocks are not officially recommended as a tool for curbing the behavior of players who are engaging in excessively exuberant English language liberties.

... guys just FYI ... I acknowledged the "language evolves" thing in literally the second line of the original post.

You can all stop saying it now one poster after another as if you're bringing something new to the discussion!

(try reading more than the thread title before hitting reply).


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 solkan wrote:
As far as I know, the original poster is doomed to disappointment.

Because, as others have noted, GW has been using the word 'dice' as both singular and plural for long enough that Americans were just being told "That's British English for you" for about the last twenty five year.

It's also worth noting that dreadsocks are not officially recommended as a tool for curbing the behavior of players who are engaging in excessively exuberant English language liberties.

I can't help but snigger at the term "British English".

Anyway ... that is quite strange. I'm Australian (I just live in Sweden, if you noticed the location thingy) ... and I've only ever heard people who are not gamers say "dice" casually. In fact, I reckon that a good percentage of them say "die" too. I mean, non-nerds.

Strangely enough, in Sweden they speak "American English" (the reason being that most of them learn from television) and they say "dice" as a plural. There's even a Taxi Company here called "Two Dices".

Don't take this is an argument that "you're wrong!". I'm sure you're right. It was just an semi-interesting observation.

 vipoid wrote:
Hey man I can see your determined to hold down the fort when it comes to language but its really fine. Like you youreself said language evolves. It doesnt' matter if you use the right words or the right punctuation (so long as everyone understands what you mean).

Unless your', just, one of, those grammer snobs the, sort of person who get's annoyed, over where you place commas and apostrophise. You have to understand that language is like a birthday card its' the thought that counts'.

Irregardless you're complaints isnt' even correct in this case. In fact your putting the carrot before the horse and as we both know that's an illogical fallacy. You want Games' Workshop to use die but die is a verb. You cant' roll a verb now can you? So it only makes sense for them to use dies instead.

This way everyone is clear on what everyone means'.

This gave me an embolism.

Well played.

Two Dices

That hurts my gamer soul like fingernails on a chalkboard.

 vipoid wrote:
Hey man I can see your determined to hold down the fort when it comes to language but its really fine. Like you youreself said language evolves. It doesnt' matter if you use the right words or the right punctuation (so long as everyone understands what you mean).

Unless your', just, one of, those grammer snobs the, sort of person who get's annoyed, over where you place commas and apostrophise. You have to understand that language is like a birthday card its' the thought that counts'.

Irregardless you're complaints isnt' even correct in this case. In fact your putting the carrot before the horse and as we both know that's an illogical fallacy. You want Games' Workshop to use die but die is a verb. You cant' roll a verb now can you? So it only makes sense for them to use dies instead.

This way everyone is clear on what everyone means'.

"Irregardless" is not a word you ignorant hethen. It's "regardless".

Does that answer your question? Yes, I am a grumpy old grammer snob. And yes, I do get annoyed with misplaced "apostrophise". No joke I once saw a sign in a fish shop that said:

"fresh" fish

You can imagine how my eyebrows rolled to the back of my head.

P.S. yes, I realise this is parody. Well played. So is my reply. (but the fresh fish story is 100% true)

D6, I don't think I ever use the word die or dice in the rules I propose.

Die means to cease living.

Dice could be a 20D20s or 1D3.

The Miralce rules don't seem ambiguous though, in this case it is not a problem.