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Comment by cpach | Hacker News Reader

AFAICT ”a shambles” is correct usage. See https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/24/in-shambles-a-shambles/

Neat, but don't know if I can switch because of how it rolls off the tongue.

It got easier for me once I learned that "shambles" is a noun that is a synonym of "slaughterhouse". Once I learned that, I emphasized shambles slightly differently as I rolled the phrase off my tongue.

"SHA-1 is a slaughterhouse"

"SHA-1 is a shambles"

Yeah I got that from the link, I had no idea before. However, I feel like if it was "is a shamble" it would make more sense to me than "is a shambles".

...for traditional use, maybe, but any editor worth their salt will stop you from doing so. At least in America. Many words have changed their meaning and use over the last 500 years.

Downvoted. There's no ISO standard for English, since language is a social phenomenon. "Correct" language is whatever the community of speakers uses in practice, not what someone claims is correct in a blog post (or even a book).

And the linked article showed you that, in practice, "a shambles" is perfectly correct English. It is therefore correct in a descriptivist sense.

Beyond that prefixing your comment by "downvoted" is frankly silly and only serves to derail the conversation IMO.

"a shambles" is not used (or quite rarely used) in North America, in my experience. Which was what the OP was asking about.

You are of course right that "a shambles" is perfectly fine British English, but that's beside the point.

I'm in North America and have never heard ‘in shambles’, without ‘a’. If I did, I'd probably take it as uneducated sociolect.

Fascinating. I'm guessing it's a regional thing where certain parts of the US say "in shambles" vs. "a shambles" vs. "in a shambles".

Not sure how it would be measured, but I think a /r/dataisbeautiful map would be interesting to see.

NYC here, never have heard it with an 'a'. Its always just 'in shambles'.

> And the linked article showed you that, in practice, "a shambles" is perfectly correct English.

I'd think "in practice" would mean evidence of contemporary usage.

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