PEOPLE OR PERSONS?

    What is more appropriate: PEOPLE or PERSONS?

This is something students don’t often get right. I will provide you with some explanations I found in a really good English site:     http://www.dailywritingtips.com/people-versus-persons/

‘PERSON derives from persona, which refers to an individual. PEOPLE, on the other hand, derives from populum, and it refers to a group of persons sharing a culture or social environment.’  

  ‘PERSON is a singular form, and its plural is PERSONS. Over the time, however, many writers started to adopt PEOPLE as the plural form of PERSON, and nowadays it is widely accepted.’

‘Notice that legal and very formal texts still use PERSONS as the plural form.’

Every year the American magazine TIME chooses an important person for their special year-end magazine cover in December. This person (or persons) is, for better or for worst, the most relevant person of the year.

It is normally a person who is selected, but sometimes more than one person win this renowned recognition.

In the cover of 2005 you can see an example of the plural of person, PERSONS (as mentioned above, very formal texts use PERSONS as the plural form).

 

Person of the year 2011

 

Persons of the year 2005