Amaya's baby blessing was Sunday in Sparks. She's awfully cute. Marcie is engaged to a guy named Don. What were the chances that two sisters would both marry guys named Don? Hmmm.

What does the word "troop" really mean? According to several dictionaries, it means a group of soldiers. Thus, when CNN says that 100,000 more troops are heading to Iraq, to me that means that 100,000 groups of soldiers are involved. If that's the case, how many soldiers are typically in a troop? 1? 15? 50? If a troop is only one person (like the Army's catch phrases 'An Army of One' and 'I am the Army'), then that would equate to 100,000 soldiers. If a troop, however, is a group of 50, that would mean 5,000,000 soldiers. That's a big difference, so which is it?

The only explanation is to assume that the two words "troop" and "troops" are completely unrelated words. "Troops" is clearly not the plural of "troop", so there clearly must not be a plural of this word available in the English language. I think we need one, so I'm going to invent one right now: "troopz". "Troopz" is now the plural of "troop". This is the most logical choice because it's a homophone (no, not a gay communications device) with the other word that everyone misuses, so by adding this new word not only will they not have to learn a completely different word, I'll be automatically correcting millions of people's speaking errors. As for spelling, however...

This type of spelling convention is not without precedent. You might recognize some of the following other "z" words: 'Orbitz', 'Babyz', 'warez', 'Carz', and 'Koolerz', just to name a few.

Having just invented a word, I feel some examples are in order. Please read the following two simple sentences to make sure you can recognize the difference:

1. Ten troops retreated behind the hill.


2. Ten troopz retreated behind the hill.

Did you catch it? Sentence #1 states that 10 individuals fell back. Sentence #2 states that 10 groups of people fell back. Just remember that the "z" word is always better than the other one, because it will always connote a greater number since we're talking about the plural of a plural. Got it? Good. I'll inform the dictionary people.