Timeline for What is the correct way to pluralize an acronym / initialism?
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| Nov 20, 2012 at 19:16 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @tchrist: Lynne Truss says that some dictionaries allow the addition of 's instead of a bare s for a few short words if the result without the apostrophe would be even messier. This gives rise to ex's and do's (a do being a colloquial term for a function or party). I'm not sure that and's, but's, and don't's work too well. I've read somewhere that words cited as words can be italicised and apostrophised: 'There are too many and's in this paragraph.' | |
| Oct 15, 2012 at 23:51 | comment | added | supercat | If the normal pronunciation of "ATM" were "atom", reading the letters as text, then a pluralizing "s" would match the interpretation of the preceding characters, thus avoiding any need for a delimiter. But to my eye, if "ATM" is read as three discrete letters, "ATMs" would be four discrete letters, rather than three discrete letters plus an extra "zz" sound (which I would notate as ATM's). Note also, btw, that in the latter usage one could regard the apostrophe as eliding "achine" (without the apostrophe, the plural would be "automatic teller machine s", since initialisms elide word breaks). | |
| Oct 15, 2012 at 23:45 | comment | added | supercat | @tchrist: I would suggest that using apostrophes to separate out single letters should be interpreted as a manifestation of a more general rule: use apostrophes when one syllable contains elements which should be parsed differently (e.g. when one talks of having five i's, the letter before the apostrophe should be read as a discrete letter, while the letter after should be pronounced as though it was part of a word). While this construct most commonly occurs when forming plurals of things which cannot be regarded as "nouns read in usual fashion", it's also usable in constructs like "DQ'ed". | |
| Feb 24, 2012 at 1:12 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | Actually, an apostrophe is used for plurals in at least one special situation: single letters. As in mind your p’s and q’s. If you think about it, it has to work that way: you don’t dot your *is; you dot your i’s, and necessarily so. | |
| Aug 14, 2010 at 21:50 | history | edited | Pavel Radzivilovsky | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 171 characters in body
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| Aug 12, 2010 at 20:55 | history | answered | Pavel Radzivilovsky | CC BY-SA 2.5 |