Selected families

I am a new reader of the magazine and I’ve just read the article “Something for the techies” (July 2014, page 65), noticing what in my book is a mistake that I wish to check with you: “BBSI (…) offers accommodation with selected local families…”. I was taught at school that ‘selected’ is the past participle, whereas ‘select’ is the adjective, thus the sentence should be “offers accommodation with SELECT local families”. Am I right? Thanks! Alberto

“Selected” is fine. It is a past participle, but it is also an adjective. Whereas “select families” would mean ‘prestigious families’ (rather like champagne), “selected families” implies that they have been carefully chosen.