Correct use of apostrophes

Associate
Joined
2 Jul 2004
Posts
268
I'm a little confused;

Dictionary.com says:
The superscript sign ( ' ) used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters from a word, the possessive case, or the plurals of numbers, letters, and abbreviations.
But The Apostrophe Protection Society says:
3. Apostrophes are NEVER ever used to denote plurals!

...
  • MOT's at this garage which should read MOTs at this garage
  • 1000's of bargains here! which should read 1000s of bargains here!

I would normally consider an apostrophe in "the 80's" as correct (as in the nineteen eighties), and an apostrophe in CPU's (plural of CPU) as incorrect, but those two websites listed above have conflicting views.

Which is correct?
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Feb 2003
Posts
6,157
vaultingSlinky said:
to be honest you could justify it either way

As in CPU(')s, writing CPU is an abbreviation of central processing unit (i hope), and so the ' between U and s could be justified as the ' is in place of U' nit 's.

Or at least thats the way i see it.

If you're talking about the CPU's cache, then ok. If you're talking about more than one CPU, then that's not correct. CPU is an acronym. If the ' is after one letter, it should be after all other letters.
 
Permabanned
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
47,396
Location
Essex
MikeTimbers said:
On these very forums the other day, someone posted:

"He wen't missing"

which was nice.

Something else you see on these forums and lots of other places are things like:

"on it's own"

which makes as much sense as writing their's, your's or her's.

Most people seem to think it is correct though, but they are of course wrong.
 
Back
Top Bottom