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apostrophe's to indicate plural's?
2

apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

(OP)
when did they stop teaching what apostrophes are used for, anyway?

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

What makes you think the teachers stopped teaching?

Perhaps the better question is why do the students refuse to learn?

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

They have stopped teaching; they've gone into test prepping.  AND students are not learning as much.  

It used to be that NOT graduating in 4 yrs from college was a sign of bad student, now it's become accepted and may wind up being the norm.

TTFN

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I believe apostrophes started to be acceptable plurals for acronyms, so the 's' is not confused with the acronym.  It has since been bastardized.

--Scott

For some pleasure reading, try FAQ731-376

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

You should not need to pluralize acronyms. The word being substituted for the letter already contains the plural form of the word. For example:

Degree of Freedom = DOF
Degrees of Freedom = DOF not DOF's, DOFs, or DsOF!

Right?

Best regards,

Matthew Ian Loew
[color blue]"Luck is the residue of design."
Branch Rickey [/color]

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

MLoew,

I am inclined to disagree with respect to plurals of acronyms. I feel that when it aids clarity to indicate a plural, the “s” should be added – without the apostrophe, which would indicate the possessive case. I am also personally inclined that we should write what we say. I tend to talk about Degrees of Freedom or DOFs. Otherwise, if I write or say that “I restrained the DOF”, how do you know if I restrained one or several degrees of freedom?

Another case in point: in Australia & New Zealand, we are very proud of our Anzacs – strictly speaking, soldiers from the “Australia and New Zealand Army Corps” in the First World War, but now also colloquially any Australian or New Zealand solider. “ANZAC” is an acronym, and has now passed the test of time, such that it usually only has the initial capital. Nevertheless, a group of veterans marching on Anzac Day are Anzacs, not Anzac. (Although, sadly, the last of the original Anzacs passed away last year.)

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

MLoew said:

"You should not need to pluralize acronyms. The word being substituted for the letter already contains the plural form of the word."

While that's often true, there are some examples. The one I just stumbled across in writing a cover letter is concerns programmable logic controllers. My sentence says "...pneumatics, hydraulics, and PLC's ..." Leaving off the apostrophe makes the reading very awkward. Just try to say "pneumatics, hydraulics, and PLC..."

You certainly could argue that the "C" contains the pluralization but it doesn't read at all well. Even if it's strictly correct (which assertion I challenge), it reads poorly and would reflect similarly on me, I believe.

I've seen (& could write) PLCs but I consider that the apostrophe's inclusion creates a more readable text. JMO...

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

JulianHardy,

Here is another data point on the subject.  If you say you restrained the DOF, then you restrained 1 Degree of Freedom.  If you said you restrained 6 DOF, then you restrained 6 Degrees of Freedom.  

Regards,

Cory

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I obviously agree with Cory. I am not sure why there is such a desire to be so unspecific with our communication. Acronyms are only useful if there is an understanding of what it stands for. They should only be used to hasten communication so the conversation can move on to the NBT (Next Big Thing).

Best regards,

Matthew Ian Loew
"Luck is the residue of design."
Branch Rickey


Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

How about changing the acronym in mid-sentence.  

Has anyone used PLC to program a PLC?

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Only when I'm working for a PLC (UK - Public Limited Company)

Good Luck
johnwm

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Nanoman said "...pneumatics, hydraulics, and PLC's ..."

why not "...pneumatics, hydraulics, and PLCs ..."  ? That apostrophe you used is no help at all.

I think the problem with plurals of acronyms is oral. When we say "2 D.O.F. were constrained" it sounds wrong, whereas "2 D.O.F.s were constrained" sounds more natural.

Cheers

Greg Locock

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Greg,

To play devil's advocate, why must English plurals have an "s" on the end to sound correct?  I think "2 sheep were constrained" sounds good, as does "2 DOF were constrained".

Regards,

Cory

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Don't go there Cory! we will move from 1 sheep 2 sheep compared to 1 duck 2 ducks and from there to collective nouns, herds of them.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

shouldn't it have been more like flocks?

TTFN

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

A flock of collective nouns? Sounds OK to me!

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

The DOF situation is a special case, because the plural applies to a word other than the last word of the acronym.

I beleive the general rule for all such cases is "When in doubt, spell it out."

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Flock this, if you dare!

What is the correct form for the possessive of a collective noun?

Flock's, or flocks', or does it depend on context?

What if it is a possessive plural collective noun?

My vote would be:

"There is a flock of geese in the pond outside my house.  The flock's honking makes it difficult to hear the TV."

and

"There is a flock of geese and a flock of ducks in the pond outside my house.  The flocks' honking and quacking makes it difficult to hear the TV."

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

That's gaggle of geese!!

TTFN

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I think you're correct.

A flock's quacking would be the noise from one flock, but a flocks' quacking would be the collective quacking of more than one flock.

Of course if you're talking about a flock of ducks, then the flock must be in flight.  If the ducks are swimming, then it's not a flock, it's a raft of ducks or a paddling of ducks.  A brace of ducks can be in any state.  But for geese, the flock is for any state.  A gaggle of geese is on the ground, and a skein of geese are in flight.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

State-dependent collective nouns.

Why are such things necessary?

"I saw many geese flying south today" seems entirely adequate. (Does this also qualify for the redundancy thread?)

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

The difference between
"I saw many geese flying south today"
and
"I saw a flock of geese flying south today"
is that in the first sentence the geese are not necessarily flying together.  It could easily mean that every five minutes or so you saw 1 goose flying south.  In the second sentence the geese are together in a flock.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

This time of year, at least around here the geese are flying NORTH.

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
www.kitsonengineering.com

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

It is foggy here today, so if any geese are flying they must be running IFR.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

GregLock said:

why not "...pneumatics, hydraulics, and PLCs ..."  ? That apostrophe you used is no help at all.


Greg, as I said in my post, "I've seen (& could write) PLCs but I consider that the apostrophe's inclusion creates a more readable text. JMO..."

That's pretty much it... I consider that the text with the apostrophe is more readable. Also keep in mind that I was specifically contrasting it to the notion that the plurality is contained within the letter of the acronym and that therefore acronyms should always be written singular.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I don't get it. When I see the apostrophe I start to look for something being possessed, or missing. You have now invented a third meaning for an apostrophe which I might robustly but pompously describe as

"a punctuation mark used to indicate that some word in the expansion of the previous acronym is going to acquire the succeeding letter as a suffix"

Well, maybe we do need a mark like that. I don't think so. You do. Where's the ambiguity in PLCs?

My reading is that the following are correct, non-ambiguous and consistent.

"This PLC's blue" (informally or in reported speech)
"This PLC is blue"
"This PLC's case is blue"
"These PLCs are blue"
"These PLCs' cases are blue"
 
Your usage gives


"This PLC's blue"
"This PLC is blue"
"This PLC's case is blue"
"These PLC's are blue"
"These PLCs' cases are blue" (I think)

Every time I read case 4 I wonder where the missing thing possessed is.

I think the issue comes about because those of us who use TOFLAs as daily jargon stop expanding them, even mentally, so through familiarity the acronym becomes a synonym for the original expression, and gets treated as a normal word.

 

Cheers

Greg Locock

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Three Or Four Letter Acronym
or even five letters as in this case

TTFN

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

TOFOFLAs

What started as a joke has become a monster!

It's also redundant and tautological, acronym by itself is a perfectly good word to describe any version of the concept.

TTFN indeed



Cheers

Greg Locock

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

"... redundant and tautological, ..."???

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

OK, OK... Greg, I hereby abandon my support for the apostrophe's use in acronym pluralization.

That said, though, I still maintain that the early statement "you should not need to pluralize acronyms" - the statement with which I was taking issue - is not correct.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

"... redundant and tautological, ..."???

my humour is often subtle. As someone once wrote

Cheers

Greg Locock

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Going back to the issue of apostrophes and acronym pluralization...

A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker says, "Use an apostrophe and -s to pluralize numbers mentioned as numbers, letters mentioned as letters, words mentioned as words, and abbreviations."

For example, figure 8's...red J's...enough maybe's...see their ID's

If the author is correct then acronyms (partly defined by m-w.com as "an abbreviation formed from initial letters") are also correctly pluralized with apostrophes, are they not?

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I'm with you, nm.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

NanoMan,

I don't know the Diana Hacker book, so I can't comment on her credentials. I always refer to Fowler's when in doubt. As far as Fowler is concerned, the apostrophe has two primary uses:

a) To indicate the possessive case. (e.g. "the bee's knees")
b) To indicate omitted letters, especially in common contractions. (e.g. "He'll meet you later", "The joke's on you")

The apostrophe is no longer normally used in the plural of abbreviated forms (e.g. "The CVs of several of our PEs date back to the 1990s"), BUT it IS used when clarity calls for it (e.g. "Dot your i's and cross your t's")

It seems to me that if we are to get a final determination on examples such as "figure 8s", "red Js", "enough maybes", and "see their IDs" (none of which seem to me to require the apostrophe for clarity), we shall need to set my expert (Fowler) up against your expert (Hacker) at 10 paces, and let them fight it out!

(This could be tricky. It seems Diana Hacker died earlier this year, while Henry Watson Fowler died in 1933.)

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Perhaps we should include Kenneth Wilson in the duel

In The Columbia Guide to Standard American English he equivocates saying, "sometimes to mark plural numbers and letters (three 6’s, two A’s)"

Gee, that helps...

This is looking like one of those unanswerable questions.

The one thing it's made me realize: "Be careful about assuming someone else's grammar is wrong even if it disagrees with what I was taught or have read."

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

What a wimp! At least Fowler and Hacker had the courage of their convictions to "lay down the law", even if their interpretations are contradictory.

Is Kenneth Wilson still alive?

If he is dead, that puts him in the category of being an esteemed expert from days gone by, and therefore his opinion is beyond reproach. If he is still alive, he would have the unfair advantage that none of the opponents can contradict him.

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

This thread is indeed educative. Let's see how the experts tackle this one: how does one apply the normal possessive ending 's to singular words such as Lloyd's, boss, St James, the United States ?



RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

Add "apostrophe-s" to names that end in "s" when the additional "s" would be pronounced.

Add an apostrophe only without the trailing "s" if the additional "s" is not pronounced.

I don't know of any rule as to when you do or don't pronounce the extra "s" - I think it's just a matter of what rolls off the tongue.

I can't see how or why you would add an apostrophe (with or without a trailing "s") to Lloyd's - it's already possessive (as in Lloyd's Bank). But you might conceivably want to say:

Lloyd's Bank's customers' accounts

(If you read this carefully, I think the meaning is clear enough. If you were to say it out loud, there is a real risk that the listener would not be sure which words are plural, which are possessive singular, and which are possessive plural!)

My take on the others is as follows:

The boss's car

St James' Place (although I imagine some people would say St James's)

The United States' Air Force

(Others may choose to disagree with some or all of these.)

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I agree to original post. My kids are not taught much on apostrophes. I wish they would!

RE: apostrophe's to indicate plural's?

I got the message. Only for the records:
Lloyds is the bank, Lloyd's is the insurer.

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