Dragaera

Off topic - grammar question

Howard Brazee howard at brazee.net
Tue Jun 22 18:34:00 PDT 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."
>
> The apostrophe already has two or three important jobs -- no need to
> further overload the operator.
>
> pe

Using capitalization to indicate a plural such as "CDs" is relatively new.
Using the apostrophe is pretty old and well established.