jjimm, your error is this “Apostrophes are NEVER used to denote plurals.”
If you had qualified that statement a little more, you might have been correct. However, you are in error when you say “never.” The source that I have quoted to you remains the standard in the United States. Therefore, apostrophes are sometimes used to denote plurals. (You do count Americans, don’t you?)
Now, that said, what source are you using for your information? I assume that since you insist that you are correct, the standard must be different in either in England or in Ireland.
Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?
Ah well, Zoe, I did qualify it, and even threw in a little insult for anyone who disagreed with me, but you’re right in saying that I was incorrect in fact.
I should have been a bit clearer - “In my opinion, you should NEVER use apostrophes to denote plurals, because a) you don’t really need to, and b) it is this very practice that serves to confuse people who haven’t quite gotten a handle on the whole apostrophe thing”.
I’m using both my opinionated opinion, and Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
Damn! I just did a half hour’s worth of research on British usage and came back loaded for bear! Rats! I hate it when my rebuffs are unnecessary!
I am glad that you did mention “opinion” actually. It reminded me to add to my comment to Eve about the New York Times. I feel certain that they have their own style manual showing their preferred usage. Since they admit to having made mistakes by adding the apostrophe to 1960s, then I assume that to do so is a violation of their style manual.
I’ve got a question. How should one pluralize an initialism ending in an S? If you were writing about Uninterrupted Power Supplies, would they be * UPSs* or * UPSes*? Thank you.
I’d say the former. UPSs seems perfectly legible to me, and one would instinctively know how to pronounce it. The problem is if the abbreviation is lower-case, say, “ups”. I have no real idea what to do there, but I guarantee you I wouldn’t use an apostrophe. How about “more than one ups”?
Yes, Zoe, what did you find out? I know that some spelling rules and rules regarding the use of end punctuation with quotation marks are different. However, sometimes people try to pawn off ridiculous sentence structures by saying, “Oh, we learn it that way back in Jamaica/South Africa/Wales/wherever.”* Meanwhile, I can’t find any serious differences except for the quotation mark issue.
Mariemarie, words that end with a ch-, s-, or x- sound get an -es plural ending. I must admit, UPSes…is awkward as hell.
*This is in a workplace context. I’m not stopping people in the street to correct them, or making an ass of myself at Happy Hour. Okay, I usually am an ass at Happy Hour, but it’s not related to grammar.
I call those apostrophe addicts, along with their kin the comma junkies, “the decorators.” They think their writing is looking far too plain, so they just start saturation-bombing it with commas and apostrophes every four or five words.
I had, a sub-editor, who used, to do this. I had an image of him with a pepper-shaker full of commas, and whenever I’d hand him copy he’d wait till I was gone, furtively give it a shake over the paper, and then pass it on to be typeset.
I suffer from a bad case of dash rash - I just can’t help myself - I hate short sentences. I also tend to over-use parentheses (I don’t know why). I must take colon and semi colon usage lessons from Gary Kumquat - my need is great.
My current pet peeve is unnecessary capitalisation. Agreeing content for the motor tax payment website I’m working on is a constant battle. I’ve no major problem with “Limerick Motor Tax Office” but it’s not “your local Motor Tax Office”, for fuck’s sake.
MWAP, that over-capitalisation thing seems to be a particularly Irish phenomenon. I am constantly removing them from my colleagues’ writing. Stuff like:
It strikes me as very 1920s - sort of Wodehouseian.
Dash-rash is okay. My own curse is my unorganized mind, which leads me to clump together my wildly racing thoughts with dashes, parentheses, colons, and my beloved ellipsis marks…precious, precious ellipses. I can control myself when I’m knocking out something official or something that’s going to be graded. However, when I’m writing a message board post or an informal email or a livejournal entry…I tend to write as I speak, and out come the ellipsis marks.
I know how much this annoys people, but I can’t stop.
I’ve noticed that persons of a scientific bent tend to overcapitalize. My husband is a good example…he used to capitalize almost every noun. He got better, though.
When I learned German in school, that was the fact that surprised me most of all, that all nouns are capitalized! How funny-lookin’!
My most common mistakes would not be punctuation, I think, but correct use of grammar.
I still tend to have a “continental” slant to my phrases, even though I think in English.
Misplaced capital letters are the bane of my life. In general, I just correct the case and carry on.
This particular instance stands out in my mind as a gobsmacking example.
I asked for submissions for a newsletter from my esteemed colleagues and yes, many of them have a scientific bent, sugaree. This newsletter forms a major part of our branding in the industry so I obviously want to make it as interesting as possible. Aside from the content, I think nothing looks worse in a professional publication than illiterate English. All of the customers who receive this thing are also scientists of some shape or form.
I corrected this
“The balance has a Capacity of 75Kg”
to
“The balance has a capacity of 75kg”
And a customer sent me an e-mail to say that
“The K for Kilo Should have a Capital letter”
What?
An upper case K is a Kelvin, a lower case k, when used as a prefix to an SI unit denotes a thousand of them.
I understand that in everyday life, people do not care much about Kelvin, but this guy was an engineer.
And before you start giving me erroneous advice on SI nomenclature and the issue of capital letters, pal, you should learn about the basics of capital letters in ordinary, everyday English.
Thanks for the OP. I was going to comment on the handful of errors in it, but others have beat me to the punch.
For the dash-rash fellow, here’s a set of guidelines that might help you vary your punctuation:
If your little snarky side-comment doesn’t really matter much (such as this one), set it apart with parentheses.
If you’ve got a normal snarky comment to make, the kind that is a necessary part of the sentence, set it apart with commas.
If you’ve got a big fat snarky comment to make – I’m talking major huge, everybody-pay-attention-to-me-snarky – use dashes to set it apart.
If you’ve got two closely related sentences, consider joining them with a semicolon; it’s easy and fun.
If you’ve got an explanatory phrase coming up, emulate this sentence: use a colon followed by the explanatory phrase. (Note that the colon must be preceded by something that could be a complete sentence).
How about “more than one ups”?