I’ts?
Both are acceptable–ABCs/ABC’s or 13s/13’s. For numbers, I prefer the apostrophe-less plural, but for letters, I need that apostrophe to prevent confusion. To wit:
Mary got three As, two Bs, and four Cs on her report card.
Mary got three A’s, two B’s, and four C’s on her report card.
The first version just looks very jarring to me, but YMMV. It’s even worse when you begin a sentence with it. As are the best grade in the class. or A’s are the best grade in the class. Yes, I suppose there’s this variation: "A"s are the best grade in the class, but that just looks plain ugly to me.
The Oakand As wear the A’s jerseys.
Oops:
The Oakland As wear the As’ jerseys.
Here’s one that always gets me:
CBS’s or CBS’?
As in: It’s all part of CBSs new fall lineup!
I know the AP rule on it, but what do you think it should be?
Oops, that should read, “It’s all part of CBS’ new fall lineup!”
As I learned, it’s because “its” is a pronoun, as are “his”, “hers”, “ours”, “yours”, and “theirs”, none of which feature apostrophes. By the way, the possessive phrase “Bob’s book” is actually a contracted version of “Bob his book”.
SimonMoon5: You can copy and paste the ¢ symbol, as well as many other “special font characters”, from this handy page compiled by SDMB member WolfMeister. If he had paid me 0.25¢ each time I’ve mentioned the page on this board, I’d now be a couple of pennies richer…
I read Giraffe’s post in the thread he recently closed on comma placement, and I think there might be some confusion.
They weren’t multiple threads on the same topic. They were two threads that were only slightly related to each other, in that each was about punctuation.
This one was about the apostrophe, specifically in the “its” “it’s” example; the other was about the placement of the comma in quotations.
While that makes sense, I would avoid (on principle) using the names of sports teams as examples for grammar and spelling rules.
The Toronto Maple Leafs? :smack:
Sometimes I think that people would be a lot less hesitant to take athletic scholarships seriously if they’d just knock that crap off.
That makes grammatical sense. There’s several examples of how normally irregular plurals take regular endings in English, depending on how they’re parsed. For example, the plural of “life” is “lives,” but the plural of “still life” is “still lifes.” The plural of “mouse,” in the computer sense, is often “mouses” (which I prefer to “mice.”)
Well, that’s the thing.
Normally, we use an 's to indicative possessive.
E.g., that is Trunk’s car.
Now, we all KNOW that the possessive of the pronoun “it” is “its”, but it’s not completely illogical that you’d think, “oh it’s a possessive, so I’m going to throw in the apostrophe.” I’m not saying it’s right. I know it’s wrong. I’m just saying that there’s a good reason why some stay confused. “It” is such a fucked up word anyway. There are times when it’s clearly a pronoun, but what the hell is it when you say “it is hot out there”. It’s not like it’s standing in for something. Yeah, I’m sure whatever it is is obvious to those of you who really know grammar, but for those of us who haven’t parsed a sentence since eighth grade, whatever that part of speech is is lost on me.
That’s much different than the “arbitrary apostrophe”, as in someone writing, “There are five house’s on my street.”
Besides, “it” can function as a noun (“we’re playing tag and he’s it.”) so there should be some circumstance where it would actually proper to write “it’s” as the possessive.
“Whose shoe is that on the tag field?”
“That’s it’s shoe.”
I think the “its-it’s” is a completely different ballpark than “their”, “they’re” and “there”. Of all grammar rants, “its-it’s” is the LAMEST.
The apostrophe is my heroic flaw. Despite all of my efforts to speak and type correctly. Despite all of the people I’ve pissed off by correcting their grammer. Despite all the reading I’ve done in my life. I just can’t get it down straight. Their/there/they’re: no problem. Verb/noun agreement: no sweat. Rare and obscure syntax: easy as pie. Apostrophes: crash and burn.
How 'bout this one?
“…other people’s spelling” is correct.
People is, in this case, being used as the plural of “person,” and as such the apostrophe is placed before the s.
Similarly: men’s, women’s, children’s,
Not: mens’, womens’, childrens’
Is it needed, or can it be left out e.g., peoples
Not if you’re indicating a possessive.
The apostrophe should only be left out if you are pluralizing the term. e.g., The world is comprised of many different peoples.
An easy way to remember this is that “men” is already plural, so an s isn’t needed; hence the possessive is added to the plural “men” as in “men’s” in this case.
No literate person would say, “That is it is shoe,” which is what you’ve just suggested.
I don’t often see people add arbitrary apostrophes to words that you add -es to make the plural–foxes, boxes, wishes. I have a theory as to why some people add the arbitrary apostrophe to words ending in s:
An apostrophe is used to indicate missing letters. For example, in 'bout or diff’rent the apostrophe shows that at least one letter is missing. My theory is that people understand that you add -es to make words plural. When adding just an -s, the e becomes a “missing” letter. Hence the 's after words like house’s. You wouldn’t write “housees,” therefore the second e must be replaced by an apostrophe.