[OSM-talk] amenity=doctor or amenity=doctors ? [tagging]

[Stephen Hope]

It's laziness in the language - doctors is the short hand form of
"doctor's surgery/office/place". Some (me included) would write it as
doctor's, though the shortened form sometimes loses the apostrophe. It
has nothing to do with how many doctors there are.  "I'm going to the
doctor's" is talking about the place, "I'm going to the doctor" is
talking about the person.

As we are marking the location, not the person, doctors is arguably
more accurate. Quite possibly more confusing, though, specially for
those unskilled in English slang. Personally, I don't care, but it
would be nice to have a recommended form.

Stephen

2009/2/20 Andrew Chadwick (email lists) <andrewc-email-lists at piffle.org>:
> Also true of doctors' offices quite a lot of the time, where you'll have
> more than one GP, each with his/her own nameplate and consulting room,
> and a shared waiting / reception area. That's the pattern for many city
> GP practices in .uk anyway.
>
> Could also be laziness in use of language: albeit a sort of laziness
> that's common to both tags. And being a lazy developer, I'll probably go
> with established JOSM / t at h practice: plural.
>