Marc Rizkallah (asker) Oct 4, 2013:

hahaha! touché, Tony ... non, percé!

Tony M Oct 4, 2013:

Right! I see, sounds then rather as if they are describing the drills in general, rather than the one that might be in this pack. BTW, drill-bits often ARE sold individually, even in quite small sizes.

I think in this case it ought to be 'perce-picacité', don't you? :-))

Marc Rizkallah (asker) Oct 4, 2013:

good point. Hi Tony,
I see your point. unfortunately there's no sentence here, it's just a bullet point to packaging, but I suppose the package could include multiple drill bits. I was thrown off because the picture on the package showed a single drill bit, but I mean - who sells one drill bit at a time, right?

Haha, merci encore pour ta perspicacité Tony!

Tony M Oct 4, 2013:

Plural It all depends exactly how it is worded in the source text: if it says something like 'these drills all have split points', then the plural is fine; in FR the logic is that each drill only has one point, so the singular is used; EN logic, on the other hand, would say that there are several drills, each with a point, so there must be several points (because they don't all share one point, for example!)
The latter point is illustrated by the following sentence:
By 9 o'c, the children were in their beds
(each child in its own bed)
By 9 o'c, the children were in their bed
(all the children together in one communal bed)