this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
186 points (91.9% liked)

memes

9668 readers
2841 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Folks should just remember that apostrophes are never used to pluralize. Of course there are like 2 exceptions, but better to be right 98 times out of 100 than guess every time.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And even the exception is pretty rare: you use ' when pluralizing a lower-case letter. For instance, "There are two i's in pluralizing." The reason is obvious: you could wind up creating a different and confusing word. But how often do you even need to do that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That and, depending on the stylebook you use, some specific words and uppercase letters that could be considered confusing when pluralized, like "Oakland A's" and "Do's and Don'ts" (according to AP, while I much prefer Chicago's guidelines).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Wow, I've probably seen it a million times but never noticed, but "don'ts" just looks so wrong. "Dont's"? "Don't's"? "Donts"? AAAAAAAHHHHH

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also acronyms, again depending on whom you ask. At least based on my own instincts and online searching.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

While your instincts may say so, not according to any one of the major style guides (AP, MLA, Chicago, NYT, APA, Columbia). An apostrophe is only added for possessives rather than plurals with acronyms, but a lot of people still add them erroneously. Most sources online will say "don't do it but some people do by mistake."