Dragaera

Off topic - grammar question

Tue Jun 22 13:37:17 PDT 2004


On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Gomi no Sensei wrote:

> 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."

Oops - "disk" did look funny.  I like your solution except that it forces
me to write "I recently bought The New Pornographer's latest CD" instead
of "cd".  Perhaps "cd" is my original and fatal error.


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

Hear, hear.