Singular or Plural Label for HTML Table or List

Question

I have a grid that will contain 0, 1 or several email addresses. I would like to know what the best practice is for labeling this.

Should the header read

• Phone Number
• Phone Numbers
• Phone Number(s)
• or something else?

Answer 1

The label is referring to the actual table cell info (describing it), so unless you have two or more numbers in a cell then you should stick to singular. In every table you have related data on every row, and you actually read table rows not columns.

Example:

-------------------------------------------
#  |  Username  |  Adress  |  Phone Number
-------------------------------------------
1  |  Username1 |  Adress1 |  Phone Number1
2  |  Username2 |  Adress2 |  Phone Number2
3  |  Username3 |  Adress3 |  Phone Number3
-------------------------------------------

Recording No.2 in which Username2 has Phone Number2 (so in the table header should be "Phone Number").

In your case, "phone number" attached to email_x is 098 765 432.

As long as we talk about the table/list title, it is referring to the entire list of phone numbers so it should be plural - Phone Numbers (title applies for the entire zone that it describes, sg vs plural, depending on what it contains, in this case a list = more than 1 element).

UPDATE (after carefully analyzing your table data)

My explanation above is referring to general usage, in your case, if we are talking about a single person's phone number or numbers you can actually use "Phone number(s)" (if only one number can exist), but that is related to upper hierarchy (user).

Answer 2

Simply use "Phone Number" if you need one or more phone numbers. If you need more than one number then use "Phone Numbers".