Plural of acronyms? (was: clarification needed)

Subject: Plural of acronyms? (was: clarification needed)
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 13:12:46 -0500

Missed the original, but the question seems to have been whether "The PCs
will be built or reconfigured" is better than "The PC's will be built or
reconfigured".

Although it's true that apostrophe-s is generally restricted to use in
possessives (e.g., "the PC's motherboard"), it's _not_ true that it never
can or should be used to denote plurals. There's a longstanding tradition
(usage, possibly supported by grammar) that the apostrophe can be used to
help indicate a plural where following standard practice and omitting the
apostrophe "looks wrong" to the alert reader (i.e., the result could be
mistaken for something else or leads to confusion, as in the example "there
are two s's in this sentence"). It might also be a problem where the
lowercase s used to denote the plural might appear to be a typo in context.
For example, what about a situation in which you're talking about computers
(PCs) and "personal communications services" (PCS)? Check out the Chicago
Manual of Style or any other comprehensive style guide for details.

If that approach bothers you, you can certainly write your way around the
problem: "Each PC will be built..." or "Engineering will... each PC". But
on the whole, you don't need to rewrite: simply adding an s solves the
problem in most cases, and where it doesn't, the apostrophe is probably
harmless.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."--Goethe

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