-----Original Message----- From: Philip Hart [mailto:philiph at slac.stanford.edu] Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 1:37 PM To: dragaera at dragaera.info Subject: Re: Off topic - grammar question 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. Plurals and Apostrophes We use an apostrophe to create plural forms in two limited situations: for pluralized letters of the alphabet and when we are trying to create the plural form of a word that refers to the word itself. Here we also should italicize this "word as word," but not the 's ending that belongs to it. Do not use the apostrophe+s to create the plural of acronyms (pronounceable abbreviations such as laser and IRA and URL*) and other abbreviations. (A possible exception to this last rule is an acronym that ends in "S": "We filed four NOS's in that folder.") Jeffrey got four A's on his last report card. Towanda learned very quickly to mind her p's and q's. You have fifteen and's in that last paragraph. source: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm warbi