John, you are completely, absolutely, phenomenally wrong. The ONLY reason to
use an apostrophe would be if there were ambiguity without it. So if we have
a bunch of people in Group A, and we are referring to them as "A's," the
apostrophe keeps us from reading it as "As." Then, for the sake of
consistency, within the same article we'd refer to B's, C's, and the like.
It is DVDs. It will always be DVDs. If you are tempted to deviate from DVDs,
you must stop yourself. Go for a bike ride or something like that. Come
back. Type "DVDs." There. Feel better?
--J
On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:35 PM, tschibasch <tschibasch_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Speaking of pluralities...
>
> I often see apostrophes when pluralizing acronyms. Has this possibly become
> the accepted way of doing it?
>
> Take the case of DVD. How do we make this plural?
>
> We might first make it like this: DVDs
>
> But it looks odd with a lowercase letter at the end. So, we fix this and
> render it as: DVDS
>
> But now it looks like it might be a different acronym. Maybe some new
> special digital format exists? We do have DVD, DVDR, DVDRW; why not DVDS?
>
> So, instead, we insert a small apostrophe separation: DVD's
>
> There we go! The problem here, of course, is that we are creating a single
> form for both possessive and plural... There again, the context usually is
> clear whether we are speaking of possession or plurality.
>
> Is this valid? Or have I committed "apostrophe apostasy"?
>
> John
>
>
> --- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com<OliveStarlightOrchestra%40yahoogroups.com>,
> "Rin Watt" <katecwatt_at_...> wrote:
> >
> > John would certainly be the expert on how to indicate that one was
> referring, not to one goofball, but to a plurality, a surfeit, a nimiety, a
> superabundance, a plethora, nay, a cornucopia, of goofbell.
> >
> > Rin
> >
> > "tschibasch" <tschibasch_at_> wrote:
> > >
> > > I was not saying that the apostrophized plural was wrong, Jack. I see
> it used quite often.
> > >
> > > With "walkman", I personally prefer "walkmen" as plural. But with
> "goofball", should we go with "goofbell"?
> > >
> > > :-)
> > >
> > > John
> >
>
>
>
--
Joy M. McCann
Goddess of Ink and Paper
(But pixels obey me, too.)
Mistress of proofreading, fact-checking,
Line-editing, and copyediting
Copy Write Editorial Services
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Received on 2009-06-30 14:46:06