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

Yes, but if a quote is the last portion of a sentance, does the "." go inside the quotes or outside of the quotes?

The teacher said "the period goes outside the quote."

vs

The teacher said "the period goes outside the quote".

England or the US?

African or European swallow?

It was just so much easier to talk with people instead of using the Internet. 4th grade was a long time ago, but I am getting a refresher course in 7th grade math.
 
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...

Yes, an apostrophe can take take of missing letters

Don't = Do Not
Doesn't = Does Not

I think on an acronym, apostrophe "S" is appropriate.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
Yes, but if a quote is the last portion of a sentance, does the "." go inside the quotes or outside of tthe quotes.

The teacher said "the period goes outside the quote."

vs

The teacher said "the period goes outside the quote".

It was just so much easier to talk with people instead of using the Internet. 4th grade was a long time ago, but I am getting a refresher course in 7th grade math.
Click to expand...


In this instance there is a difference between the British English and the American English.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
Yes, but if a quote is the last portion of a sentance, does the "." go inside the quotes or outside of the quotes?

The teacher said "the period goes outside the quote."

vs

The teacher said "the period goes outside the quote".

England or the US?

African or European?

It was just so much easier to talk with people instead of using the Internet. 4th grade was a long time ago, but I am getting a refresher course in 7th grade math.
Click to expand...

I was taught that the "Period" goes after the "". to end the quote.
 
And let's not forget Australian english where we take the best from Anglo and US styles and mutilate it to suit ourselves! :D
 
And remember that the only way to get FORTRAN to output an apostrophe is to use a Hollerith constant or load 27h into a valriable and use an A descriptor in the Format statement to print it.

I hate printing apostrophes.
 
I use the 's. Why? Because I grew up seeing it done that way. My Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition, 1938, says: Plural of a letter, figure, sign, etc. To express the plural of a letter, figure, or any character or sign, or of a word mentioned without regard to its meaning, the letter s generally preceded by the apostrophe, is appended; as in, the two l's in all; the two 00's in 400; he uses too many if's. Some writers omit the apostrophe.
So there you have it. Seems in 1938 the 's was more generally used but the apostrophe could be omitted. Is it the other way around today? I don't know. Does it matter. NO!
Now on to more important questions such as: Is it a, b , c, and d or a, b, c and d. Comma before the "and" or not? Have at it!
 
Spavinaw, see the link in my post above for my take on the comma issue.

This is a fun thread, but we haven't yet talked about the use uf quotation marks for "emphasis"...that's the one that really bugs me!
Rob
 
Different style guides treat apostrophes differently, in cases similar to that which started this thread. And to be completely and utterly pedantic, RF is not an acronym, it is an initialism. Laser and scuba were acronyms (they're simply words now, eschewing the capitalization and punctuation quirks of acronyms altogether), AIDS and NATO are acronyms, while RF and USB are initialisms.

I'm a fan of the Mariners (yes, they suck; no one realizes this more than me) and people call them the M's. Punctuation is an unspoken convention to make written meaning clear, and there is no method of writing M's that helps clarity if one removes the apostrophe.
 
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There is an exception to the general rule (possessives/contractions) when omission would cause confusion: The Oakland A's (not the Oakland As), "mind your p's and q's" not "mind your ps and qs" etc. If you want to talk about words or letters ("the number of as's in the sentence," e.g. not "the number of ass (or ases)" there is no other way to do it.

Ben
 
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