Dragaera

Off topic - grammar question

Gomi no Sensei gomi at speakeasy.net
Tue Jun 22 13:23:05 PDT 2004

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Philip Hart wrote:

> How do you feel about the pluralization of the abbreviation of "compact
> disk"?

I feel that 'disk' is, properly speaking, an abomination. 'Compact Discs'
is a perfectly serviceable plural, however, as is CDs. In my field
(technical writing) we pluralise acronyms quite often, videlicet 'APIs',
'CRTs,' et al. The only place I want to see "CD's" is in a sentence
like "This CD's surface is scratched up and I want to return it, please."

The apostrophe already has two or three important jobs -- no need to further
overload the operator.

pe