What's the consensus

topic posted Tue, November 16, 2004 - 3:01 PM by  Unsubscribed
On pluralizing CD (as in compact discs, but heck, certificate of deposit works too). Likewise FAQ, FTE (full time employees), etc.

Personally it drives me crazy when people use an apostrophe, i.e., CD's. Is it possessive? A contraction? No, say I!

Doth I protest too much?
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    Re: What's the consensus

    Tue, November 16, 2004 - 3:31 PM
    Well according to my AP Stylebook I'm right, at any rate. :)

    So remember, if you buy more than one CD, you've bought yourself some CDs. NOT CD's.
    • Re: What's the consensus

      Tue, November 16, 2004 - 11:32 PM
      Diana Hacker says to use apostrophe-s to pluralize numbers, letters, and words mentioned as such, and abbreviations. Personally, I just use an s (e.g. CDs) except to avoid confusion.
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        Re: What's the consensus

        Wed, November 17, 2004 - 9:04 AM
        I could Google, I guess, but...Who/What is Diana Hacker?
        • Re: What's the consensus

          Wed, November 17, 2004 - 11:25 PM
          Sorry, I was a bit overzealous with my brevity. Diana Hacker is the author of A Writer's Reference. It was required for one of my English classes.
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            Re: What's the consensus

            Thu, November 18, 2004 - 7:14 AM
            Well I say our usage of just the "s" in plurals of words that are "just letters" (CD, DVD, etc.) makes us just a little better than Diana. :)
            • Re: What's the consensus

              Mon, January 10, 2005 - 5:41 PM
              Fowler, as I recall, says no "s."
              But then, you can tell that he must be British, since otherwise he would have said no "s".
              • Re: What's the consensus

                Mon, January 10, 2005 - 11:27 PM
                I disagree... british style is that the full stop (or other terminal punctuation) goes outside the quotes unless there is full sentence inside.

                Wheter Fowler is British or not is a moot point at this juncture -- i was just making a point about standard usage.

                If one consults any of the authoritative works on punctuation in English, it is generally agreed that letters, when pluralised, should take an apostrophe to avoid confusion, as should the word do. So, s's , do's and don'ts, etc.

                The matter of the apostrophe after an acronym is one that is less well covered in most of the 'proper' books on grammar, stlye and usage, but the style used by most publishers is CDs, if you must pluralise the acronym itself. This can get tricky, however, if you have acronyms ending in 'S', viz OS (Operating System), since OSs looks silly (but not as ugly as OSes, IMO), and i think that such examples go to prove that the best solution is not to pluralise such acronyms at all, and re-word your sentence to avoid the problem.
                • Re: What's the consensus

                  Sun, January 30, 2005 - 9:47 PM
                  In baseball, RBI has become a word, so that RBIs makes a ton of sense, but there should be no problem with:

                  Runs Batted In = RBI, just as
                  Run Batted In = RBI,

                  as in:

                  "With the help of buckets of steroids pumping through his body, Barry Bonds had 17 RBI in the top of the sixth inning."

                  RBIs are sometimes pronounced "ribbies". In this case, obviously, the "s" belongs, but perhaps it should be written "ribbies".
                  • This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.

                    Re: What's the consensus

                    Thu, February 3, 2005 - 1:15 AM
                    Ah, sort of like revolutions per minute. People would generally say "it was spinning at 100 rpm", with the revolutions (and hence the acronym) being plural. I've heard people say rpms, but not often.

                    (And then there's the capitalization issue....)
                    • Re: What's the consensus

                      Fri, March 11, 2005 - 12:04 PM
                      I'm sure the world will never agree with me, but here's my take on the subject.

                      CD stands for Compact Disk.

                      So if you were to buy 2 of them, you would have two compact disks.

                      Since the 's' becomes part of the word 'disk' and the compact remains single (not compacts disks) the s would get sucked into the word and not be stuck on the end at all.

                      So CD would join the small company of words who do not change their spelling when pluralized. Moose have friends.


                      My 25 cents,
                      Meredith

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