One problem with avoiding the apostrophe is that if you see a new abbreviation like PMEs, you don’t know if the ‘s’ is part of the brand name or trademark or if it is there to denote a plural (of course context may help with this)
Or, even with a common abbreviation, you could have someone trademark something like DVDs (where the ‘s’ in the product logo might be a superscript and is meant to denote something like ‘Super’, i.e. an improved version of DVD, but in written plain text drops down to the baseline)
So, I prefer DVD’s, PC’s, etc
Question for the grammar/style nazis: Where does grammar end and style begin? (since people have said that the question in the OP is a matter of style and not grammar)
[QUOTE=Polerius]
One problem with avoiding the apostrophe is that if you see a new abbreviation like PMEs, you don’t know if the ‘s’ is part of the brand name or trademark or if it is there to denote a plural (of course context may help with this)
[/quote]
Huh? The difference in case is sufficient to clarify the lowercase final -s as a plural suffix.
Again, huh? I’ve never seen an example of superscript as an abbreviation for “super” like you describe. Did you just make that up? Anyway, if it does exist as a superscript, writing a normal s for the plural is still clearly different and does not cause confusion.
The unneeded apostrophe in plurals annoys me, not just because it adds clutter for no good reason, but more so because of the erroneous use of apostrophes to pluralize any damn word, which is seriously annoying. Cut that problem off at the root, I say. Do not encourage those people by ever using apostrophes where they can be avoided.
I like the Wikipedia userbox that announces: “Thi’s user know’s that not every word that end’s with s need’s an apostrophe and will remove misused apostrophe’s from Wikipedia with extreme prejudice.”
I used to work for a large IT services company (CSC) and in 1984 my division had its own style guide for technical writing that forbade apostrophes for plurals. So, not even that modern.
This also is a matter of style, and though unusual it’s perfectly valid to use PMs’s and prime ministers’s, if you adopt that consistently. Many threads have discussed it; a summary can be found in the Unofficial FAQ.
[Latin Nazi hat] Bestiality is from the Latin bestia an animal or beast. Strictly, bestiality should mean beastliness, behaving like an animal. However, it seems to have taken on a particular aspect of behaving like an animal - being really into animals, so to speak.[/Latin Nazi hat]
No, no, no. It 's either “der englischen Sprache” (definite article - adjective - substantive) or “des Englischen” (long live the genitive!). The dative is currently throttling the genitive in parlance but it’d still sound weird to say
“vom Englischen”
in German (shudder). Besides, the meaning would be slightly different.
Well, according to a few people I have worked with you are all wrong!
I have a couple of techies in my team who refuse to pluralise abbreviations at all. The reasoning is that the abbreviation already contains the plural form, just as it contains the singular form.
So Digital Versatile Disc and Digital Versatile Discs should *both *abbreviate to DVD.
The DVD is scratched
The DVD are scratched
I’ve argued against it from a style point-of-view, but can’t argue against it from a strict grammar point-of-view.
In my sight, too, partly because it’s arguable that DVD is not an abbreviation. No one ever says “digital versatile disc”, and DVDs were launched with the name simply “DVD”.
However, even though people do talk about “compact discs”, the abbreviation of that is “CDs”,
I agree totally about DVD. As I said in my earlier post, abbreviations like DVD have become nouns in their own right. Most people would have to think very carefully to work out what DVD even stands for.
The standard usage is one DVD, two DVDs. So, treating DVD as singular or plural is just obtuse jargon, someone being deliberately obscure to confuse people. It is poor communication, since it does not convey a clear meaning.
Examples are vanishingly rare, but there are various brand names that use a mix of upper and lower case letters, and the trademark will be for that set of symbols. One of the more unusual examples was [noparse]DivX;)[/noparse] [now just DivX] , which was used to avoid confusion with DIVX.
The confusion that this might cause is so unlikely that I’ve been switching to the bare s plural when I can remember to do it.
A similar case, although not one with plural confusion : Which is correct — GAASFET, GAAS FET, or GaAs FET?
The third one, since it’s made with Gallium Arsenide as the substrate. “GaAsFET” is occasionally seen as well. Either way it’s pronounced like ‘gas fet’.
While DVD was orginally short for digital video disk, I think the real issue is that spelling it in all caps is a sign that the word is meant to be pronounced letter by letter rather than according to the ordinary rules of phonetics. (Which, for many iniatialism, wouldn’t e possible anyway.)
Style is primarily punctuation. It has no effect on content or how words link together. The following two sentences are grammatically identical, but stylistically disparate:
Walter finally returned my CDs, both of which had been scratched. Though he said, “I’m really sorry about that,” I knew he was lying.
Walter finally returned my CD’s – both of which had been scratched. Though he said “I’m really sorry about that”, I knew he was lying.
