Vienna's desserts, schnitzel

[Michael Quinion]

> Again, it would appear that EURO is the plural, but I heard "EUROS"
> on BBC just now. And the BBC is always right?

There is some confusion over this. It rests on a misunderstanding of
the original EU directive, which seemed to suggest that "euro" is
invariant in the plural in all circumstances. This is observed by
many organisations in formal documents, including the Irish and
British central banks and other financial institutions. However, in
popular usage the usual orthographic rules take precedence.

The English Style Guide of the European Commission Translation
Service, at <http://europa.eu.int/comm/translation/en/stygd/
enstyle.htm#tocref2_53>, takes this commonsense approach:

> 12.12  Guidelines on the use of the euro, issued via the
> Secretariat-General, state that the plurals of both 'euro' and
> 'cent' are to be written without 's' in English. Do this when
> amending or referring to legal texts that themselves observe this
> rule. Elsewhere, and especially in documents intended for the
> general public, use the natural plural with 's' for both terms.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>