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Which is grammatical?

  1. response time of multiple services
  2. response times of multiple services
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closed as general reference by Matt Эллен, MετάEd, tchrist, Mahnax, cornbread ninja 麵包忍者 Aug 31 '12 at 14:04

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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Response time would be appropriate if you wanted to refer to the response time of all the services as a whole. For example:

The response time of the services is 10s.

However, if you want to refer to multiple time instances or a time interval then use response times. For example:

"Typical response times are 8 to 16 ms for black-white-black, or 2 to 6ms for grey-to-grey."

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up vote 0 down vote

It depends on the rest of the sentence.

  • The average response time of multiple services were not in the acceptable range.

  • The range of response times of multiple services was not acceptable.

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Your first sentence should use 'was' not 'were'. You are talking about a single response time- the average. – Jim Aug 17 '12 at 15:01
up vote 0 down vote

A bit more context would be welcome. With what you posted I'd go with "response times"

"The response times of our intranet and extranet services have improved by 10% over the last month."

"The response time of our intranet and extranet services is perceived as slow by most users."

Both work. It depends on the context, IMO.

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