Of course, lot’s of people seem to think that any word that ends in a vowel other than “e” needs an apostrophe in it. I’ve never quite understood this logic. You see stuff like:
CD Players, Televisions, Radio*‘s, Video’*s
Starters, Main Courses, Pizza*’*s, Desserts
They don’t stick an apostophe in any of the other plurals, so what is it about vowels that screams “I need an apostrophe!”? Beats me…
This is a woosh, right?
I work for an IT Operations department, and I hate how they usually abbreviate it “OPS”. It isn’t O.P.S., it’s Ops or Operations. But they never listen to me any way, so I’m not going to say anything about this.
To the OP: I can well see why you have problems abbreviating things.
Those yahoos? What do they know about the English language. The real rules for apostrophes have been delivered to us from Bob the Angry Flower.
Er, sure. :o
The Merriam-Webster Seventh Collegiate Dictionary ©1963 gives
By The Merriam-Webster Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary ©1990, the entire section on Plurals (along with the sections on Spelling, Punctuation, Compounds, Capitalization, and Italicization) had been dropped and there is no reference to the use of Apostrophes when used with abbreviations in their shortened Handbook of Style under the Punctuation sub-category.
Actually, no. I’ve seen it a number of times, pretty much as Colophon illustrated. I have to assume the perpetrators intermix and misapply a few rules of which they have a vague recollection.
I think McNew was merely pointing out that some kind of illiterate gremlin mysteriously inserted an apostrophe into the word “lots” in my post. (It’s the only explanation!)
:smack: D’oh! I didn’t notice it was bolded.
Now, please explain the apostrophe above in “d’oh.” 
A more old-fashioned way of abbreviating “purchase orders” might be “pp.oo.” (or “ppoo”), on the pattern of “pp” meaning “pages”, “spp” meaning “species (plural)”, and so on. I believe Spanish still uses this method, hence “EEUU” means “Estados Unidos”.
I always have interpreted that apostrophe as representing a glottal stop, as in the spelling Hawai’i.
I use POs or P/Os, the latter being analgous to A/R, A/P, P/R, etc.
We use POs. If you use the abbreviation many times, spell it out the first time. Contract language uses this device:
Please submit your purchase orders (POs) to the Accounts Receivables office no later than thirty days after the intial quote. POs submitted after the thirty-day period are subject to denial if the reviewing officer deems the purchase amounts to be significantly different than current catalog prices. If the reviewing officer denies the POs, the s/he will provide alternative pricing amounts (APAs). If you agree to these APAs, please submit Form 3849Z within thirty days of receiving the APAs…otherwise, you will be required to repeat the quoting process with a different vendor representative according to the Fair Competitive Goods and Services Act (FCGSA). Ignoring the APAs and resubmitting the POs will result in violating the FCGSA, whereupon your Priority Customer Account (PCA) will be suspended for a period of … (blah blah blah…I could go on forever with this kind of bureaucratise…)
Its just another example of the subliterate culture that doesn’t know how to spell “duh”.
(The its is a whoosh)
I’m rather sure that (Bryan) Garner recommends such spellings. Probably Birchfield as well.
The real problem with plurals lies in the choice of which rules to adopt when playing Boggle.
Ten or twelve years ago a teacher informed me that it was no longer considered appropriate to use an apostrophe in situations that are not possessive. It was a history class and if memory serves correctly our discussion was in specific reference to how to refer to a specific decade in written form. (e.g. 1920s vs. 1920’s) Being that I am an awful nitpick on spelling and grammar, her explanation made beautiful sense to me and for the most part I stopped using apostrophes for non-possessives.
I’m rather annoyed that the rest of the world missed whatever announcement it was that my teacher heard and was referring to, since most people still use the apostrophe when it doesn’t belong.
Hm. Following the exmple of the plural of “species,” I would now like to nominate “poo” as the plural of "purchase order. 
Have you never SEEN Homer in action? “D’oh!” is a perfect representation of how he says it; it’s definitely not “duh.”
Ah, the old “My teacher said” school of usage. Did she also tell you it’s “wrong” to split infinitives and to end a sentence with a preposition?
Teachers are famous for pronouncing things “wrong” when they’re either acceptable constructions, outdated/ill-informed rules somebody made up for no good reason other than to be pedantic, or simply the teacher’s pet peeve. Theodore Bernstein’s reference Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins gets its title from this phenomenon.
In this case your teacher’s preference agrees with Chicago; however, I just finished copyediting a book by a journalist who of course follows AP style, and (because the publisher follows Chicago) I spent a lot of time taking out apostrophes in dates that could have been perfectly acceptable in the New York Times.
There are precious few “announcements” or hard-and-fast rules in grammar; for the rules that do exist, there always seems to be a counterexample of when to break it for clarity or effect. There are, however, plenty of style choices to be made. Some people seem so disappointed when told that there’s no right or wrong on the point they want to argue.
And Good Lord! Some of you people need to buy new reference books once in a while! CMS13? MW7? Those are in the 15th and 11th editions these days! Get with the program! :dubious: (says the proud owner of a first edition of Words Into Type, acquired used with scads of clippings and handwritten notations within, and a third edition of Webster’s Collegiate, and who by nature of her profession has to buy new editions all the time and realizes that not everyone feels that need)
Buncombe. Such a strong tradition, this, with clarity and all that in those apostrophes which mean one thing – plural.
“Mind your ps and qs”? Hard on the eyes. No lack of authority to recommend the preferable “p’s and q’s.” See above.
Like the OP i personally think PO’s looks better than POs. I don’t know why but i think that uppercase lower case combo just looks wrong.
I was very relieved to find my preferred way is equally correct, however anyone who thinks they know how to use an apostophe always ‘corrects’ me like i’m some idiot who needs english lessons!
Anyway, a (sort of) related question if you don’t mind. My old department was called Customer Operations’ Projects (just realised the apostrophe was almost certainly mis-used there). Anyway, it was always abbreviated by my colleugues as COPs. Now, forgetting about the apostrophe for a moment, were they correct to put the s on the end? I always felt it was unecessary, like it effectively double pluralised it if you see what i mean.
What do you think? I think it just sounded funny saying COP when referring to a department as it sounds singlar so people felt the need to pluralise. I kinda get that, although i have no idea why singular seems weird in this case when so many other department names seem ok, Finance etc.