[Grammar/poll] Quick check ...

[dancefloorlandmine]

Should the plural of an acronym have an apostrophe?

[Poll #1217630]

I know what the Times and Oxford style guides say, but I was wondering about the opinions of my readership on the wonderful wibbly wobbly world wide web.

Comments

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

The imposition of superfluous apostrophes must be stopped before they bring down our civilisation! Protect the purity of the mother tongue!

[hungry-pixel.livejournal.com]

I'd only use an apostrophe for that if it's indicating possession. As in (hypothetically) - "the GCSE's invigilators". That's a bad eggsample (sorry, the ecks key is buggered on this keyboard; I'm working around it!) but you get the picture.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

...that must make logging into things really annoying, given what your username is!

[hungry-pixel.livejournal.com]

There was a whole episode with Notebook, some ctrl-x attempts, some swearing as I realised the futility of that move, some ctrl-c-ing, and finally success at logging in :-)

Then I moved to another terminal :-) (Airport PCs, bah!)

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

NO! NO! and NO!

An apostrophe should only be used to denote possession e.g. "The boy's shoe", or shortening "is" e.g. " it's instead of it is".

Apprentally there is an Apostrophe Protection Society.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

No, absolutely not. And if writing in uppercase the s should drop to lower case, e.g.

ALL BOYS CRAP AT GCSEs, SAY RESEARCHERS

not


ALL BOYS CRAP AT GCSE'S, SAY RESEARCHERS

[trampledamage.livejournal.com]

To answer your question - no.

I have another question - is GCSE an acronym? Is it still an acronym if you don't pronounce it as a word?

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Although most acronyms are pronounced as words, not all are. According to Chambers, they are "usually" pronounced as words ... but these days many acronyms are warped in order to be pronouncable ...

[trampledamage.livejournal.com]

ah-ha - thank you. I wasn't sure if it had to be a word, so that GCSE is 'just a collection of letters' :o)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Technically if you don't say it as a word (GATT, DEFRA, Asda) it's just an abbreviation. But the terms are used pretty interchangeably these days.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Isn't it more of a string of abbreviations than a single abbreviation, because it is made up of several separate words?

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

It's an abbreviation of the phrase, smartypants.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Bah! [grin]

[djpsyche.livejournal.com]

It appears in England, abbreviations that are pronounced as words are not written with all capital letters, whereas abbreviations where each letter is pronounced on its own are: Aids vs GCSEs. In America all abbreviations are capitalised: it's AIDS.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

It used to be AIDS here, when it was first in the media, and the initial campaigns were running - it appears to have shifted from acronym to proper noun in the intervening years.

[vin_petrol]

I believe it *used* to be the case that the apostrophe should be used, and it has fallen out of favour in the last few decades. I have a very hazy memory of being taught to use it in the 1970s.

If you watch Gerry Anderson's "UFO", the teleprinter at the start does contain something like "SEARCHING FOR UFO'S IN EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE." I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be an error, so it was considered reasonable usage in 1972.

It certainly isn't *now* though. It gives greengrocer's an excuse ;-)

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I follow style guides that use minimal dottage, but as the E is short for Examination I'd see the apostrophe as old-fashioned rather than wrong.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

But the plural of Examination is Examinations, not Examination's?

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Yes, but "xamination" is being elided; apostrophes can be used to mark alisions. however, in the case of GCSE, if you were to use apostrophes to mark the elisions, it would be G'C'S'E', which would be silly.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

D'oh, I o'erlook'd the elision aspect. Although yes, G'C'S'E' would be daft!

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the apostrophe would be indicating missing letters (as in "don't") rather than possession. Similar to putting full stops after Mr or Dr to show they're abbreviations - old-fashioned and I don't do it any more (against civil service style).

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

My mistake - I forgot about the use of an apostrophe to mark an elision. I suppose an alternative view would be that GCSE is actually a string of abbreviations, so could be G.C.S.E. - I suppose that the increasing use of acronyms has resulted in the steady dropping of the intervening stops.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the apostrophe would be indicating missing letters (as in "don't") rather than possession. Similar to putting full stops after Mr or Dr to show they're abbreviations - old-fashioned and I don't do it any more (against civil service style).

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

The E is short for Education - General Certificate of Secondary Education.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

D'oh! I knew that!

Blame the codeined-up brain...

[kathbad]

Depends on context,

"More people are taking GCSEs this year" has no apostrophe.

"There is much discussion about the difficulty levels of the GCSEs' these days" does.

Unless I am wrong.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I'm not clear on the distinction between those two; why would you have an apostrophe in the second example but not the first?

[kathbad]

That is because I am being dumb.

The second sentence should be "the GCSEs' difficulty levels."

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

*heh* Ah, that makes sense! But in that case it's GCSEs', rather than GCSE's, and the apostrophe has nothing to do with the plural; it's possessive, which is a whole different issue, I guess.

[kathbad]

Indeed, the question is not clear!

I was just being pedantic on a Friday...

;)

To hell with the damn' things

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The secondary usage of an apostrophe is to indicate shortening or, more precisely, dropped letters.

As such, it's arguable that an apostrophe should be appended to all acronyms. However, this isn't customary practice in recent English usage and, as the use of acronyms is in and of itself a lowering of standards in pursuit of brevity, our overriding need in such a case is that of clarity.

Would the grammar pedants out there care to tell me how the plural 's' is to be distinguished from the constituent letters of the plurally-enumerated acronym?

So tell me please, how am I to know whether I have been invoiced for three Contracts for Difference or three Credit Default Swaps unless I can be certain that the plural will be three CD's or CDS's?

Note that upper- and lower case are not a perfect guide: not all acronyms are spelt out in their entirety in capitals.

Re: To hell with the damn' things

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

So tell me please, how am I to know whether I have been invoiced for three Contracts for Difference or three Credit Default Swaps unless I can be certain that the plural will be three CD's or CDS's?
Why would there be a problem? You know from the number that it's a plural, so if it said 3 CDs, that's three time one CD; if it says 3 CDSs, that's three time one CDS. The apostrophe doesn't actually give you any extra information there.

Re: To hell with the damn' things

[hsb.livejournal.com]

You spell out on first reference, obviously. And in your example, you would write contracts for difference (CDs) and credit default swaps (CDSs).

I worked in structured finance, which is just littered with CDSs, so that one I know. House style varies on how to present the plural, of course, but reducing extraneous apostrophes and periods is generally preferred these days.

H

Re: To hell with the damn' things

[vampwillow]

I believe the former should be written "CfD" then ;-0

Re: To hell with the damn' things

[steer.livejournal.com]

Is there any case in English where an apostrophe for elision is for dropped letters at the end of a word? I can only think of examples where the apostrophe indicates dropped letters mid word as in don't, can't and so on. A dot is the usual indicator of dropped letters at the end of a word. That is, i.e. indicates the dropped letters not i'e' (although ie is also acceptable these days in any case according to Chambers). I can't think of an example of an apostrophe used for dropped letters at the end of a wordk.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Damn', you're right.

[steer.livejournal.com]

See the post below though for examples which do have your usage.

Re: To hell with the damn' things

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Huntin', fishin', shootin', rock 'n' roll...

But those are to indicate dropped letters in pronunciation, rather than missing out letters to make an abbreviation, so I think your point stands.

Re: To hell with the damn' things

[steer.livejournal.com]

Ah. Interesting, I had forgotten that usage though.

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

No, but I think they are not too bad since there are letters missing between the E and the s. bis looks like a different word and pronunciation compared to bi's. CAPITALs looks better to me than lowers.

[deviblue.livejournal.com]

should acronyms even have plurals?

if you think about it the whole point is to only take the first letter...so the s, apostrophe or not, would be cut off anyway?

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Good point - although that would probably lead to more confusion ... [grin]

"Bring the SLR!"
"Got it."
"It? What about the other two?"
"What?"

[jhg.livejournal.com]

NO!

A bit of dissent

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Chicago Manual of Style argues that apostrophes are OK if they are needed for disambiguation. I'd write "Most bi's don't attend BiCon" because if you start with "Most bis don't..." it doesn't read properly.

Re: A bit of dissent

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Yes, the whole purpose of punctuation is to point the sense. Same route as 'punctilious', meaning neat and exact. If it disambiguates and doesn't confuse, go with it. But with most common abbreviations it's not really necessary.

(Personally I think bi's is horribly ugly and I'd avoid using the abbreviation in that case as it's only a matter of a few letters to spell it out. Though even that triggers my 'person first, characteristic second' rule, also known as 'how not to sound like a Daily Mail headline writer.")

(My, that was a grotesque yet totally correct string of punctuation at the end of that last parenthesis.)

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

no, there should be no rogue 's, but I still, invariably, type DVD's and then have to backspace and correct ...