Timeline for Why did they spell it "URL’s"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
4 events
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| Feb 16, 2013 at 14:56 | history | edited | avpaderno | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 19 characters in body
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| Oct 15, 2012 at 23:31 | comment | added | supercat | ...the apostrophe in "URL's" could be regarded as an elision of "ocator". If one were writing out "U.R.L.", each period would represent both some omitted letters and a word break. Since the plural of "universal reference locator" is not "universal reference locator s", some other mark would seem necessary to indicate that "ocator" was elided without also indicating that there should be a trailing word break. | |
| Oct 15, 2012 at 23:28 | comment | added | supercat | I would favor the apostrophe as a joining character when material which is supposed to be read in unusual fashion (e.g. as discrete letters) is concatenated with material which is supposed to be read as text. If one pronounces "URL" like "earl", the plural form "URLs" would be "earls", but if one pronounces "URL" as "you-are-ell", a pluralizing "s" should not be read as a discrete letter. While apostrophe usage is most common when making plurals of things that are not normal nouns, it also appears in expressions like "DQ'ed". Also, even if one favors the 'apostrophe for elision' notion... | |
| Mar 19, 2011 at 14:10 | history | answered | avpaderno | CC BY-SA 2.5 |