[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

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.)