Editing Staff (music) (section)

==Usage and etymology==

''Staff'' is more common than ''stave'' in both [[American English]] and [[British English]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=music+staff%2Cmusic+stave&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=29&smoothing=3 Ngram Viewer]</ref> with the latter being, in fact, a [[back-formation]] from the plural ''staves''.<ref>Pam Peters, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, p. 514.</ref> The plural ''staffs'' also exists for ''staff'' in both American and British English, alongside the traditional plural ''staves''.<ref name=collins/> In addition to the pronunciations expected from the spellings, both plural forms are also pronounced {{IPAc-en|s|t|æ|v|z}} in American English.<ref name=mw/>