Hello,
This is driving me nuts! How do I write the plural of an acroynm?
Is it PCs or PC's?
I have been told by someone with a degree that you absolutely don't need an apostrophe, however I found a dictionary definition of apostrophe that says it is used for omission of letters from a word, the possessive case, and the plurals of letters, numbers and abbreviations.
Variations with plurals and possession:
One OS (operating system), many OS's.Many OSs? Many OSes?
It is the OS's primary function. (one operating system, posession)
Is is the OSs' primary function. (many operating systems, posession)
Aaargh. Help!
Hi,
I remember having encountered "NGOs" for the plural of NGO. A case could also be made for omitting the "s" altogether..
Here's what W3 has to say:
Abbreviations formed by literation and used as nouns add either apostrophe and -s or more often just -s.
GI -> GIs or GI's, IQ -> IQs or IQ's
so I guess it's up to the individual copy editor?
Hi midnight
As someone with some 'proofchecking' responsibilities in my company, I refuse to allow apostrophes for the plurals of acronyms. I suppose it is a personal thing, but I just can't abide it.
Similarly, I refuse to countenance the abbreviations of decades as 60's and always change it to '60s, and so on.
These are, however, my idiosyncrasies. I think that the apostrophed form will eventually prevail, merely because I see more and more people using it these days as a matter of course. I may wish to preserve the distinction between the various uses: "the PC's peripherals are useless" (singular, possessive); "the PCs have useless peripherals" (plural); and "the PCs' hard drives are useless" (plural, possessive), if only to avoid the plural possessive "the PC's' peripherals are useless and may need to be recalled". (I know this is stretching it, but amateur language mavens like me need our hard cases in order to justify bad, or simply prejudiced, laws!)
cheer
the sunshine warrior
I agree with just adding an -s; but here is an exception. I have coined an acronym for use on my web page and for style purposes have rendered it as lower case (to wit, wwftd) -- just adding -s seems to muddle the acronym, so I have used the -'s form. (to make matters worse, the plural of the expanded acronym leaves the acronym as 'wwftd'...)
I agree there should be no apostrophe.
On the other hand, there's a very simple answer - don't use acronyms.
I daren't suggest, tsuwm, that the plural of your expanded acronym would strictly be ww'sftd. This way madness lies!
lusy
I agree for many acronyms the plural is logically the acronym without a 's', although if the sense is clear it doesn't really matter (and the way to make the sense clear is to avoid acronyms where possible). More irritating is the habit that some have of sticking s on the end of abbreviations of units of measurement, i.e. 1kg and 10kgs. This is a) unnecessary, since the plural is obvious b) potential confusing since s is the agreed abbreviation for second and 10kgs could be (and under the System International rules should be) read as 10 kilogram seconds. (Oh and these abbreviations are not followed by a full stop (period) either, for similar reasons)
You're absolutely right, Philip. but the *potential issue is with acronyms that get adopted into the language as new words, a la SNAFU or RADAR; so we can speak of multiple snafus and radars.
I hope that this will be the case with wwftds. <g>
BTW, it's pronounced WIF tid(s)
I know this is an old thread but it just reminded me of something.
I used to get very annoyed when asked to write such things as "I am currently working towards my GCSEs" for personal statements and the like in school.
It wouldn't have been General Certificate of Secondary Educations, it would have been General Certificates of Secondary Education.
I took to writing GCsSE and was severely reprimanded several times by teachers for my "cheek" and lack of co-operation.
Eventually I conceded and took to writing out the full version in stead, or simply wrote "exams".
Rach.
======================
AOL IM: RachelEDugdale
Re: GCsSE
It's tough being right.
on the other hand, wwSftd not only looks silly, but is nearly unpronounceable.
In reply to:
On the other hand, there's a very simple answer - don't use acronyms.
Now, this raises a point that has been bugging me on and off for years. What is the plural of curriculum vitae? CVs doesn't look too bad, but if you write it out in full should it be curriculum vitaes, curricula vitarum, or what?
"We have received applications from 20 candidates with excellent ______________"?
Bingley
I think the term Curriculum Vitaes is used more than anything, based on the fact that the word has been loaned and is now treated as if it were English.
I've always wondered about the plural of agenda (agenda) for the same reason.
Any other plurals from words derived from Latin?
Data, now I know it's plural in Latin, but why do some people insist that it has to be plural in English when most people use it as a collective/uncountable noun (like information) which therefore takes a singular verb:
The information/data we have suggests ......
Does anyone actually count data? I can't imagine saying "We have one datum/two data etc."
Bingley
Does anyone else recall seeing the word "genii" as the
plural of genie? I thought I'd seen it in an older book,
but can't verify it now.
> Does anyone else recall seeing the word "genii" as the
plural of genie? I thought I'd seen it in an older book,
but can't verify it now.
It seems to be more appropriate as the plural for 'genius'. Like the plural of Radius is Radii.
I know I'm just an old fasioned girl and probably the boringest pedant, but at my institute we won't allow our students to use 'data' as singular. Moreover, we issue them with lists of lots of words which come from Latin and which are commonly used in their disciplines AND which we insist on them using according to their Latin plural/singular status. The usual words such as: criterion/criteria, medium/media, addendum/addenda, quantum/quanta, genus/genera, formula/formulae etc. Are we hopelessly out of kilter and fighting a losing rear-guard action?
>>Are we hopelessly out of kilter and fighting a losing rear-guard action?<<
Lucy, I sincerely hope you are not fighting a losing battle! Since I have no first-hand experience with the mind-set of the people of Australia, I may be wrong, but
I have the impression that you are a nation full of go-our-
own-way-and-be-damned-to-you-in-authority types. If that is
the case, you may be fighting for a lost cause.
I myself have all but given up on the masses in the United
States. It just sickens me to see and hear the way our
population is being "dumbed down". This is happening in
every aspect of life that I can think of, from music to the
media, to (shudder) books (i.e., you-name-it for Dummies).
What really scares me is that a great many people are happy with this level of quality! They are aware that
there is a higher way of learning and experiencing things, but are quite content to let others "handle it", and to
live their lives without checking that the "others" are well-intentioned.
However, I won't give up the fight. I see to it that my
children use correct language (I, too, hear that prevert
word from the other thread, and much more). I have fought
a four-year-and-complete-loss battle to get rid of some so-called music that has been brought into my church, but all I
keep hearing is that these jingles are popular all over the
country. I teach my kids the difference between well-written books and poorly-written ones. In my opinion, there
is a widening gap between the intellectual people and the
rest of the country. Somebody, please post that I am wrong!
Lucy, I agree wholeheartedly with your stance on Latin singular/plural usage; BUT (there's always a but, isn't there?) data seems to present a singular problem (no pun intended). As was mentioned, data usually aren't counted; in the software world, data almost always come and go in multiples, and we talk about handling single data "elements", so that 'datum' has fallen into desuetude. To further complicate matters, datum seemingly has another (mathematical?) sense of which the plural is datums!
I agree with Lucy up to a point. The point being where the plural is or is not firmly established in English usage. It's also important to distinguish between technical and non-technical usage. I think I would use "formulae" if I was speaking about chemistry or mathematics (something I fortunately only have to do on very rare occasions) but would use "formulas" in the ordinary loose sense of the word. I refuse to use "octopodes" ("Octopi", as a professor of classics said, "shows an ignorance of three languages."). I say "hippopotamuses" rather than "hippopotami" and "hippos" more often than either. Once a word has been thoroughly anglicised, I see no reason why its inflections should not be anglicised as well. And anyway, why should Latin and Greek be so uniquely priviliged? I don't suppose anyone says "sarong-sarong", using the Indonesian/Malay plural formation rather than "sarongs".
This is not a cry of down with the classics. I studied Greek and Latin at school and thoroughly enjoyed them. I think it would be a great pity if our classical heritage were lost, but there are far more important reasons why that is so than defending the ramparts against "The data shows" or "syllabuses".
Bingley
it seems that "The Mavens" eventually get around to all of our questions:
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000821