The Governor is the man. The qualifier of his office is that he is a governor 'general', not a governor for a part of the state, or a part of the operation, but a governor in general, hence 'governor-general'. It stands to reason therefore that you get one governor, two governors, three governors, etc. The plural of 'governor-general' must be 'governors-general', and not governor-generals.

The same is true of passerby. If one applies the rule of forming the adjective (the doer of the verb) by adding er, then the person who 'passes' is a 'passer'. If two persons pass, they are passers. 'By' is a descriptive preposition, added to the word to make it a compound structure, suggesting that the person did not pass over, or under, but 'by'. Since you cannot pluralise a preposition, the plural of passerby, is therefore 'passersby' and not 'passerbys'

Horror of horrors, I saw a newspaper story this week which started 'Imagine walking through the isles of a supermarket'. Isles? I think the word that the reporter wanted to use was 'aisles'. Isles are little islands. It is conceivable that they could have little islands in the supermarket, for display purposes. It is, however, inconceivable that one is going to walk through those isles, without the result being damage to property or person.

Dear Madam:

I am happy to see that The Sunday Gleaner has finally resurrected a 'Smith' column, albeit credited to a 'Wordsmith' rather than 'Mary Smith'.

May I invite you to comment on the repeated use, in the media, of the terms 'awarded' and 'conferred' in such contexts as 'Mary S. was awarded at the function' (as though the lady has been given to someone else as an award!), and 'Colonel H. will be conferred with the Dr. of Laws degree'. My understanding is that the 'conferred' is only followed by 'with' when one person is said to have conferred with another by having a discussion or 'conference'.

Every good wish for this new endeavour.

Sincerely,