Coccinellidae wide variety of beetle species in other families as "ladybirds", i.e. coccinellids. Beetles are particularly prone to such misidentification if they are spotted in red, orange or yellow and black. Examples include the much larger scarabaeid grapevine beetles and spotted species of the Chrysomelidae, Melyridae and others. Conversely, laymen may fail to identify unmarked species of Coccinellidae as "ladybirds". Other beetles that have a defensive hemispherical shape, like that of the Coccinellidae (for example the Cassidinae), also are often taken for ladybirds. A common myth, totally unfounded, is that the number of spots on the insect's back indicates its age.
Inanimate whose the starch that stiffens English style one of the most effective ingredients is the rule that "whose" shall refer only to persons"; he asserted that the alternative adds flexibility to style and proclaimed: "Let us, in the name of common sense, prohibit the prohibition of inanimate "whose"". The revised versions of that style guide by Robert Burchfield (1996) and Jeremy Butterfield (2015) called the avoidance of the inanimate "whose" a "folk-belief". In his "Plain Words" of 1954, Ernest Gowers calls the "grammarians' rule" that "whose" "must not be used of inanimate objects ... a cramping one, productive of ugly sentences