Oooooh, Faldage - now you've gone and made me mad! I tend to the peevish, but I managed to restrain myself in the possessives thread (just how admirable that was, you can't know...) ~ now I must speak!

Accounts payable/receivable are standard business terms, as too they are collective nouns (I think that's actually the grammatical term). But (and here's where I go poking my big but in), to reference a specific collection of accounts payable isn't as simple as just "Oh! Let's add a superfluous S!" Here's the trick - another modifier, a la "the accounts payable from class number 2773-30".

I'm with Hyla 100% on this one - it's on the same order of grating as "brother-in-laws".

AnnaS? May I?

Harrumph. Shame on The New Yorker.