You don't use apostophe's to plauralise anything.

Roger Hicks said:
And WHY can't Americans spell "mediaeval"? Or indeed, pronounce it? As "meddi-evil", not "muh-deeval". And why do they omit the 'i' in "fertile" or "missile", which in English are are pronounced the way they spelled, "fur-tile" and "miss-isle", not "furtle" and "missal"...
Click to expand...

Partly because education in the US revolves around saving money. And partly dialect.
 
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You think general apostrophe misuse is bad? Pfffft. Try having one in your last name. Computers have been systematically robbing the apostrophe from my last name over the past decade. They often won't allow an apostrophe when filling out a form on a computer resulting in an invalid character message in big upper case red letters. Who you calling an invalid character? My DL now shows my last name as Obrien. Most computer mail I receive is addressed to someone named Matthew O. Brien or Matthew Obrien. It's O'Brien, you asshat computers, capital O, apostrophe, capital B, lower case r, i, e, and n. That apostrophe is about all my great grandfather left Ireland with way back when, now the man stole it. *******'s!
 
mto'brien said:
You think general apostrophe misuse is bad? Pfffft. Try having one in your last name. Computers have been systematically robbing the apostrophe from my last name over the past decade. They often won't allow an apostrophe when filling out a form on a computer resulting in an invalid character message in big upper case red letters. Who you calling an invalid character? My DL now shows my last name as Obrien. Most computer mail I receive is addressed to someone named Matthew O. Brien or Matthew Obrien. It's O'Brien, you asshat computers, capital O, apostrophe, capital B, lower case r, i, e, and n. That apostrophe is about all my great grandfather left Ireland with way back when, now the man stole it. *******'s!
Click to expand...
Dear Matt,

At least SOME people know about O-apostrophe. One of my history teachers at school was called Charlie I'Anson. Scandinavian in origin, as far as I recall. Must have been even more fun than O'Brien.

You must get a lot of O'Brians, too.

Or for that matter, even without apostrophes, my wife, Frances Schultz, frequently gets Francis instead of Frances, followed by Shulz, Shultz, Schulz... And I get tired of my name being spelled Rodger.

Cheer's,

R.
 
I think I may have figured it out: Is it possible that when a computer steals an apostrophe from a name like mine or Mr. I'Anson's, it shows up somewhere where it oughtn't be. Like, for instance, in "it's" when the user does not mean "it is", but intends it as a possessive. A homeless apostrophe may even end up invading a thread title... E'Gad.
 
mto'brien said:
I think I may have figured it out: Is it possible that when a computer steals an apostrophe from a name like mine or Mr. I'Anson's, it shows up somewhere where it oughtn't be. Like, for instance, in "it's" when the user does not mean "it is", but intends it as a possessive. A homeless apostrophe may even end up invading a thread title... E'Gad.
Click to expand...

Dear Matt,

This is like the Ankh-Morpork attitude to umlauts/diareses: they regarded it as dangerous to put dots on top of letters in case they fell off and caused unnecessary punctuation.

But to take your idea further:

INVASION OF THE KILLER APOSTROPHE'S.

Cheer's,

R.
 
NOW THATS S'CARY ROGER!!!

Roger Hicks said:
Dear Matt,

This is like the Ankh-Morpork attitude to umlauts/diareses: they regarded it as dangerous to put dots on top of letters in case they fell off and caused unnecessary punctuation.

But to take your idea further:

INVASION OF THE KILLER APOSTROPHE'S.

Cheer's,

R.
Click to expand...
 
Juan Valdenebro said:
Is it correct to use them in English like this?: "In the 50's, Billie Holiday..." I think in Spanish it's a correct use after numbers, to avoid thinking the "s" is a "5"...

Cheers,

Juan
Click to expand...

Dear Juan,

I think so. Some don't. Another good example is the Rover 105. I had a 105S. I really can't see the excuse for not writing "105's" and "105S's". Then there is the Nikon F2S, to be distinguished from several Nikon F2's.

Cheers,

R.
 
I have on occasion received letters from other Americans addressed to Ted Whyte, Ted Wyatt, Ted Weite, Ted Waite, and probably other creatively arranged surnames; however, my favorite, received from an Eastern European camera seller. was to Mr. Feodor Weiss.
 
That is what I meant in my posting above.
apostrophe is for singular, while apostrophes is for plural.
apostrophe's is for possessive.
 
tomalophicon said:
RF doesn't end with S.
Click to expand...

The fact that the s is lower case suffices to show it's not part of the acronym.

pggunn said:
I believe the apostrophe is correct in RF's because as blindrobert said, it's an abbreviation, and the apostrophe stands for the missing letters in rangefinders.
Click to expand...
Really? I explained why that isn't the case in my first post.

The only reason why I started this thread was because I was bored, I thought it was a genuine error, one I used to make myself until about 2 years ago.
 
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Grammar and punctuation etc are moving targets and are being heavily influenced by social media ... they will change as they will and we have to accept it.

You won't find the term 'LOL' in our written language's history ... but you see it everywhere now and we all know exactly what it means!
 
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