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

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

In all fairness, "CD's" while it may be surprising to you, unaesthetic and unnecessary, is not clearly 'wrong', in so far as some style guides do accept that the plurals of intitialisms and acronyms may be formed using an apostrophe. I agree with you in preferring not to when sense is clear without, but it does not seem to come under the same heading of 'ungrammatical' as the more usual examples of the Grocers' Apostrophe, such as "apple's 70p/lb" or whatever (okay, here I show I have no idea how much a pound of apples costs!), which *is* clearly wrong and ungrammatical.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

On what basis are they claiming that "CD's" is an acceptable spelling of a plural?

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Not to use one is potentially confusing, especially if one is writing in capitals. What does the S stand for in CDS?

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

What does the S stand for in CDS?

Well, "Coronal Diagnostics Spectrometer", or "Cooperative Development Services"... ;-)

Of course when writing in capitals (or should that be capitols?) the 'S' could still be small, as in McDONALD. I would find that far more acceptable than a random apostrophe.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Exactly my point - without an apostrophe you get a completely different meaning, not a plural :-)

I tend to use a small s for plural abbreviations too, in normal writing. Sometimes however one only has upper case, and even when it would be possible it seems a bit of a stretch to bring in a character from a different case when one can do the job perfectly well with an existing character...

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

without an apostrophe you get a completely different meaning

It depends on the context. My example was without context. The initial example had oodles of context.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Presumably on the same grounds that it is acceptable to form plurals of numbers and letters generally with apostrophes. The common example is "mind your p's and q's". As I say, personally I generally prefer formations such as CDs and 1970s, but as the alternatives with apostrophes are accepted in formal style manuals they can hardly be said to be wrong. And I definitely agree with King Pellinor that when writing in all-capitals, the apostrophe is very useful for clarity, and I would not hesitate to use it there. While the apostophe is commonly used either to indicate 'missing letters' or to form a possessive, there are acceptable cases where it may form a plural. Plurals of abbreviations (especially I assume initialisms and acronyms) is one case; also certain very short words may (although they don't have to) use apostrophes for plurals, such as "do's" - even the OED accepts these as valid options! Just because you (or I) prefer something doesn't necessarily mean it is the only right way.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

"mind your p's and q's" comes from "Pints and Quarts"; however, I'm not sure the exact context, whether it was multiple pints and multiple quarts, or things that belonged to the pints and to the quarts.

I would guess that "do's" is a throwback to post medieval times (thinks c16 / c17) where the grammar rules and spelling was somewhat more random.

What do you think of "C.D.s"?

[segh.livejournal.com]

I was always told it was short for "mind your pleases and thank-yous".

[segh.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I just found this on World Wide Words:
Investigations by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007 when revising the entry turned up early examples of the use of Ps and Qs to mean learning the alphabet. The first is in a poem by Charles Churchill, published in 1763: “On all occasions next the chair / He stands for service of the Mayor, / And to instruct him how to use / His A’s and B’s, and P’s and Q’s.” The conclusion must be that this is the true origin.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

No, don't be ridiculous! Attempting to 'explain' "p's and q's" by reference to an imagined possessive is really reaching! (Anyway, the "pints and quarts" 'explanation' is not the only possibility - another is that it refers to typesetters' letters, where you have to be careful to pick the correct one, since of course they appear in reverse, and in a serif font can look very similar.) But "p's and q's" was merely a common example: the OED agrees that if I need to refer to multiple f's or g's (or 5's) I can use an apostrophe to do so.

I don't think anything of "C.D.s". CD is the generally accepted spelling, and I think C.D. thus looks unusual if not unnatural. As I keep saying, CDs is a perfectly good plural (as long as one has access to both upper and lower case letters) and I see no need to try to coin a new one; merely, I accept CD's as a valid alternative, even though I personally don't favour it. If writing in all-caps, C.D.S suffers the exact same problem as CDS, or perhaps even more so.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

And by the way, while I have been citing the OED recently, that is from my personal preference, but I acknowledge that it is not the only dictionary, nor the only style manual. (Indeed Oxford usage is out of step with much of the rest of British English usage over such matters as the spelling of "recognize" and similar words; I favour the Oxford usage since it echoes more closely the Greek root "-izein", but I, well, recognize that other British English users prefer the spelling "recognise".) As I say, one's personal preference does not a grammar rule make.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

"...one's personal preference does not a grammar rule make."

I'd say it does make a grammar rule, but that acceptance of the rule by other people is by no means guaranteed.

I do suffer from an internal conflict. On the one hand, I believe everyone has his own grammar and "English Grammar" is merely a description of a consensus; "ungrammatical" is therefore only relative, and as Bunn says the "ungrammatical" could be perfectly grammatical in another context or dialect. On the other hand, I get annoyed when people get things wrong :-D

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Mmn, that's getting pretty philosophical now. Can one person make a rule, without either being mandated to do so, or having other people validate the rule by accepting it?

I sympathise with your internal conflict!

"English Grammar" is merely a description of a consensus

This is very true, and one doesn't even need to go as far as talking about individual people's grammar(s) etc (though I think there is truth in that as well); there are a variety of 'correct' usages as demarcated in dictionaries and style manuals for a very wide range of spelling and grammar issues, such as placement of commas and punctuating inside or outside quotation marks and so on. Which, of course, has been my point all along.

I still feel people are WRONG! if they form the plural of "octopus" as anything other than "octopodes" (especially if they use "octopi") but I do admit that they are not necessarily 'wrong' by both dictionary and common-usage standards ;-)

(Reposted to correct bad html, sorry.)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm exactly the same. I do agree with pretty much everything David Crystal says about how language evolves, and how everything we now think is "correct" was originally seen as a debased and "wrong" corruption of the "right" language.

But yet... But yet... *wails*

[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".

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It's ungrammatical, but I'm not sure even that is wrong. It's almost expected in the context of handwritten signs on greengrocery. Could we consider it a form of market-specific dialect?

It's not as though it is likely to cause misunderstandings.

I used to fuss about punctuation, but nowadays I am more inclined to revel in having a brain so well formed that can easily process a sentence despite anomalous punctuation, in several different ways, and make a joke about it - with no inclination to fall over and spout error messages. grrr.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Fair point!