It seems that more has been written on the use, disuse, misuse and abuse of the apostrophe than on any other punctuation topic in the English-speaking world. In comparison, there’s little on the misuse of semi-colons and colons; the humble comma is largely ignored (although I personally struggle, with its proper use, at times), and the interweb is almost totally silent on the faulty utilization of the period (or full stop). But the apostrophe? Its misuse and abuse are written about more than the combined indiscretions of the ten most indiscreet celebrities du monde (certainly on the websites I visit, anyway).
The apostrophe (or “icky” as my social group called it back in the 1970s – we didn’t know about “air quotes” back then!) has been mistreated by an alarmingly large number of groups of people, including journalists at many levels. I’ve seen examples on the main news pages of the CBC’s and the BBC’s websites as well as on local news websites. The sad thing is that too many schoolteachers also misuse/abuse the apostrophe, so I hold out little hope of the situation improving any time soon.
Unfortunately, the apostrophe is the Swiss Army Knife of punctuation. You can use it to show that letters have been omitted, to indicate a possessive, to separate the “s” in certain pluralizations, and in some countries, as the first choice for quotation marks. No wonder many are confused.
I’m sure that in the dullness of time (that was a typo, but I found it amusing and left it in) I’ll add to the plethora of material on all those uses, but for now, I’m going to focus on pluralization of abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms.
Why do so many people write “CD’s”, “DVD’s”, “MP3’s” and so on?
So… What Do the “Good Books” Say?
(Yes, I’m aware of the debate raging about the overuse and abuse of the word “so”.)
The Canadian Book of Style states, “Add an s, but not an apostrophe, to form the plural of most abbreviations.” It then cites some cases where the apostrophe is appropriate:
- Numerical names of aircraft ending in a single letter. (e.g., 747B’s, not 747Bs)
- Where the absence would create ambiguity. (POW’s, c.o.d.’s, Q’s and A’s are three examples given.)
- Abbreviations containing more than one period. (e.g., G.M.’s)
That last example is a tad confusing to me, because it doesn’t distinguish itself from the possessive form. But what do I know? (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.)
The Chicago Manual of Style provides similar guidelines (and when my copy of CMS arrives, I’ll qualify “similar”!). My Hart’s Rules is still on my Amazon wish list, so I can’t reference that yet.
Those Exceptions
Although the aircraft names initially struck me as odd, I can see that the s needs to be shown to not be part of the numerical name. However, why cite numerical aircraft names, but not the model numbers of countless other items such as computer processors (one i7, two i7’s) or De Walt drills (one DCD771C2, two DCD771C2’s)?
As for POW – I disagree. When a person reads “POW”, they say “pee oh doubleyoo”, so the spoken plural would be “pee oh doubleyoos”, and it seems to me that it should therefore be written “POWs”. It seems logical to me to consider the way an initialism is spoken when determining how its plural is written; however, I don’t know if the argument would stand up in academic circles.
I did wonder if POW was cited as an exception because it’s “prisoner” that’s pluralized, not “war”. But a quick check of the Canadian Press Caps and Spelling book revealed that they recommend “MPs” for Members of Parliament, so bang went that theory.
The Long and Short of It
For the most part, pluralization of abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms follows simple rules. Pluralizing CD is no different from pluralizing Compact Disc. The same goes for most other initials. MVPs, MPs, MP3s, and so on.
As The Grammar Monster says, don’t try too hard to avoid the apostrophe.
But that doesn’t mean you should spray them around your writing like bullets in a shoot-‘em-up video game.
Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings
- Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
- Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
- Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?
If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.