A caller from Imperial Beach, California has a punctuation question: Dr. Tei Fu Chen and his wife, Dr. Oi Lin Chen own and operate a large, multinational herbal food company. In company literature, the two doctors are referred to in several ways. The caller wants to know which is the best choice.

Listen here:

Download the MP3 here (2.6 MB).

Discuss this episode in the forum.

Which of the following would you pick, and why?

1. The owners, Doctors Chens, are experts in the field.

2. The owners, Doctor Chens, are experts in the field.

3. The owners, Doctors Chen, are experts in the field.

4. The owners, the Doctors Chen, are experts in the field.

See if your answer agrees with the one Martha and Grant decided on.

Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.

Hi, Joe — More discussion of that here from folks who also thought of more.

But “heighth”???

In graduate school, we had the Doctors Hale in the department and the Doctors Plummer on campus. Beyond the original question, we had to refer to them in conversation. It finally became natural to say “Doctor Missus Hale” or “Doctor Mister Hale”. It is starting to get lengthy like German, but was the most efficient we could come up with.

Emmett Redd

“Doctors Chen” sounds best to me and I spent all of an afternoon trying to find why

Tank, this IS one of those things that can take a whole afternoon to get rid of, sort of like an earworm. I like the way it sounds too, and for the same reason.