Plurality in user messages

Question

Many times, when generating messages to show to the user, the message will contain a number of something that I want to inform the customer about.

I\'ll give a

Answer 1

I would think out of the box for a minute, all of the suggestions here are either do the pluralization (and worry about more than 1 level of pluralization, gender, etc) or not use it at all and provide a nice undo.

I would go the non lingual way and use visual queues for that. e.g. imagine an Iphone app you select items by wiping your finger. before deleting them using the master delete button, it will "shake" the selected items and show you a question mark titled box with a V (ok) or X (cancel) buttons...

Or, in the 3D world of Kinekt / Move / Wii - imagine selecting the files, moving your hand to the delete button and be told to move your hand above your head to confirm (using the same visual symbols as I mentioned before. e.g. instead of asking you delete 3 files? it will show you 3 files with a hovering half transparent red X on and tell you to do something to confirm.