Outrage!

[ladyofastolat]

A birthday card was just passed around at work for us all to sign. It included a rogue apostrophe! This was in the proper printed greeting! You kind of expect these thing's in handwritten sign's in greengrocers shop's or special's board's in pub's, and we all make slip's of the pen every now and then, but a proper published greeting's card? Outrage! Outrage! What i's the world coming to? et'c e'tc.

It's not even a funny mistake. Rogue inverted commas can be. ("Fresh" chicken soup). Confusion over similar words can be. ("The meat is complimented by the sauce." "Beware the deadly rouge gorilla fighters" etc.) This was just annoying. I am sorry to say that I had to discreetly cross it out before I could sign the card.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I've just looked at around two dozen online guides to style and grammar, and every single one so far has said that "CD's" and "CDs" are both acceptable. Apostrophes, many say, have three uses: Possessive, contraction, and (optionally) in the plurals of acronyms and abbreviations. The New York Times apparently consistently uses "CD's", though most other newspapers have opted to go the "CD's" route. Personally, I'd use CDs, but when the acronym ends with a vowel, I would dither about adding that apostrophe for clarity. "CD's" and "CDs" are at least pronounced the same, but see "BAs" and most people would probably mentally read "bas".