Timeline for Plurals of acronyms, letters, numbers — use an apostrophe or not?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 15, 2022 at 19:01 | history | edited | Glorfindel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
broken link fixed
|
| Feb 24, 2021 at 17:42 | history | edited | Rayan Khan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
fixed link
|
| Jan 25, 2019 at 16:29 | comment | added | Cato | It's hard to see why the authors felt that 7's is ok, but 99's isn't. sure the continuation of 7's is an acceptance that the original idea was right after all. | |
| Nov 3, 2018 at 9:28 | comment | added | Hugo | That may be fine in Norwegian but looks odd in English. | |
| Nov 2, 2018 at 22:51 | comment | added | Canned Man | I prefer the Norwegian solution for such cases: a hyphen. Examples: ‘1970-åra var sære. / 1970-årene var sære.’ ‘The 1970-s were weird.’ ‘7-arar er òg tal. / 7-ere er også tall.’ ‘7-s are also numbers.’ That’s what a hyphen does: It connects things. | |
| Jul 22, 2018 at 22:31 | comment | added | Spencer | Oxford is a good reference for UK English but not necessarily for American English. On this side of the pond, it's acceptable to use apostrophes for the plural of any number, thus we can refer to "the 1990's". One reference: betweenborders.com/wordsmithing/mind-your-apostrophes | |
| S Oct 17, 2017 at 19:20 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
formatting of list
|
| Oct 17, 2017 at 19:09 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Oct 17, 2017 at 19:20 | |||||
| Jan 25, 2017 at 20:36 | comment | added | Hugo | They're commonly written as CVs, VIPs, RDBs. Acronyms often forms a new lexical unit following normal rules for plurals. Similarly lasers (from "light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation") and radars (from "radio detection and ranging"). | |
| Jan 25, 2017 at 12:04 | comment | added | Keith | What about acronyms for plural words (such as Curricula Vitae, Very Important People or Relational Data Base), where the plural noun does not end in s or es? I've asked in another question but it's been closed with the insistence that this response answers that. Could you clarify? | |
| Aug 8, 2014 at 16:17 | comment | added | hobs | @NiteCyper, indeed, "7's" is more unclear because "Seven" is used as the first name for some children of very creative parents (and not-so-creative fictional parents on TV). Though numerals are not legal names in the US for people, they are certainly "legal" for pets and in some foreign countries. | |
| Apr 22, 2014 at 17:18 | comment | added | NiteCyper | I don't understand why "you can use an apostrophe to show the plurals of single numbers"; what's unclear about "7s"? | |
| Jan 26, 2012 at 16:41 | vote | accept | Jay | ||
| Jan 26, 2012 at 7:20 | comment | added | Jay | Hmm, the wording of the first paragraph you quote implies that many people do (or at one time did) use an apostrophe. That could be evidence for conventions having changed or their being some disagreement about best practice. Note I'm not arguing for a different convention; I'm just wonderingl | |
| Jan 26, 2012 at 6:53 | history | answered | Hugo | CC BY-SA 3.0 |