Why do people insist on forming plurals with an apostrophe?

[Lovehound]

Originally Posted by JaxRhapsody

I usually find grocer's apostrophes next to the three packs of elipses and semicolons. Over in produce.

Technically I think that should be grocers' apostrophe. Unless only one grocer uses it.

[E-Twist]

Perhaps the liberal use of a cattle prod on the miscreants when they incorrectly use an apostrophe would help solve the problem.

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by E-Twist

Perhaps the liberal use of a cattle prod on the miscreants when they incorrectly use an apostrophe would help solve the problem.

You are one sick person. I like the way you think.

[2x3x29x41]

Originally Posted by RocketDawg

Languages and words obviously change over time, but I can never see using an apostrophe to form a plural being correct. It's more an example of being sloppy.

Your inability to see such a thing has no bearing on whether or not it is sometimes correct.

Take the already-discussed issue of pluralizing decades: 1970s v. 1970's. Recently, while editing a manuscript in which decades were repeatedly referenced, I had cause to research this because while "1970s" looked right to me, "1970's" didn't look entirely wrong, either. What I found is that "1970's" used to be the convention, and over the past several decades this convention has changed. Some interesting charts documenting the rise and fall of the two usages were very illuminating. I imagine that because of this, I had often seen "1970's" in writing, which caused the niggling doubt in my mind. This process of one replacing the other took decades. One wasn't correct one day, incorrect the next. Use of the apostrophe was being prescribed by some respected self-appointed (in English, they all are) authorities until fairly recently.

So one can hardly blame another whose literary tastes tend toward older writings for themselves using the apostrophe in such instances. It's what those who wrote the works that they tend to read taught them. To dismiss them as 'sloppy' is merely patting yourself on the back.

Also, as I've noted previously, exceptions still persist.

Examples:
"There were 1,234 "the's" in the manuscript." [When words are referenced as words in the plural, an apostrophe is used.]
"He drew a pair of 8's for a full house." [Using an apostrophe with single numerical digits is almost universally accepted as correct.]
"She does figure 8s on the ice." [Here no apostrophe is used because that which is being pluralized is not '8' but 'figure 8'.]
"Mind your p's and q's." [The same is used for single lower case letters when referring to them as such.]
"In school, he learned the three Rs. [However, no apostrophe is used for single upper case letters as abbreviations.]
"She holds two M.A.'s and two Ph.D.'s." [The apostrophe is again used for clarity's sake when dealing with abbreviations with periods.]
"She holds two MAs and two PhD's [The apostrophe is used to pluralize abbreviations which incorporate a lower case letter before an upper case letter, but not abbreviations that consist only of upper case letters.]

People see these exceptions, rarely consciously noting them but absorbing them nonetheless.

The irony is that those who berate those using apostrophes in plurals 'because you never do that in English' are simply wrong. Sometimes you do. Now, that doesn't mean that apostrophes are not often incorrectly used in pluralization, but you'd think that those who love pointing the finger might step back and have the self-awareness to understand that if they don't know all the rules, perhaps their undisguised derision at those who don't know certain rules is not warranted.

Then there are the omissions of apostrophes where they would normally appear. The classic example is the possessive form of it, which is not "it's" but "its". The reason for this convention was to avoid confusion with the contracted form of "it is". This seems rather unnecessary, as English is rife with identical words having radically different meanings that are readily discerned from context, as could be "it's" in this case, but there you have it. For this same reason, we avoid contractions with 'is' (ex: "The boy's going to a party" - while we might say that, we instead write "The boy is going to a party") even when technically appropriate. Then there is "won't", which we use as a contraction of "will not" even though it's a contraction of "woll not" ("woll" being an archaic form of "will"). In any case, we fail to use a second apostrophe to indicate the omission of the two l's (see what I did there?) before the n. For whatever reason, the rigid prescriptivists who demand strict adherence to other rules regarding apostrophes seem happy to ignore the numerous non-standard exceptions.

Frankly, given all of these exceptions and sub-exceptions and exceptions to the sub-exceptions governing apostrophe use in the English language, it should be glaringly obvious to anyone why the masses struggle with its correct usage.

By the way, would you characterize your unfamiliarity of the times when it is appropriate to use an apostrophe in pluralizing as 'sloppy'? Or is sloppiness solely a failing of others?

[2x3x29x41]

Originally Posted by Lovehound

Technically I think that should be grocers' apostrophe. Unless only one grocer uses it.

The term grocer's apostrophe refers to a single phenomenon, regardless of how many grocers use it. The same is true of baker's dozen or apothecary's Latin or countless other such terms. The singular form is not incorrect.

[RocketDawg]

Originally Posted by 2x3x29x41

Your inability to see such a thing has no bearing on whether or not it is sometimes correct.

Take the already-discussed issue of pluralizing decades: 1970s v. 1970's. Recently, while editing a manuscript in which decades were repeatedly referenced, I had cause to research this because while "1970s" looked right to me, "1970's" didn't look entirely wrong, either. What I found is that "1970's" used to be the convention, and over the past several decades this convention has changed. Some interesting charts documenting the rise and fall of the two usages were very illuminating. I imagine that because of this, I had often seen "1970's" in writing, which caused the niggling doubt in my mind. This process of one replacing the other took decades. One wasn't correct one day, incorrect the next. Use of the apostrophe was being prescribed by some respected self-appointed (in English, they all are) authorities until fairly recently.

So one can hardly blame another whose literary tastes tend toward older writings for themselves using the apostrophe in such instances. It's what those who wrote the works that they tend to read taught them. To dismiss them as 'sloppy' is merely patting yourself on the back.

Also, as I've noted previously, exceptions still persist.

Examples:
"There were 1,234 "the's" in the manuscript." [When words are referenced as words in the plural, an apostrophe is used.]
"He drew a pair of 8's for a full house." [Using an apostrophe with single numerical digits is almost universally accepted as correct.]
"She does figure 8s on the ice." [Here no apostrophe is used because that which is being pluralized is not '8' but 'figure 8'.]
"Mind your p's and q's." [The same is used for single lower case letters when referring to them as such.]
"In school, he learned the three Rs. [However, no apostrophe is used for single upper case letters as abbreviations.]
"She holds two M.A.'s and two Ph.D.'s." [The apostrophe is again used for clarity's sake when dealing with abbreviations with periods.]
"She holds two MAs and two PhD's [The apostrophe is used to pluralize abbreviations which incorporate a lower case letter before an upper case letter, but not abbreviations that consist only of upper case letters.]

People see these exceptions, rarely consciously noting them but absorbing them nonetheless.

The irony is that those who berate those using apostrophes in plurals 'because you never do that in English' are simply wrong. Sometimes you do. Now, that doesn't mean that apostrophes are not often incorrectly used in pluralization, but you'd think that those who love pointing the finger might step back and have the self-awareness to understand that if they don't know all the rules, perhaps their undisguised derision at those who don't know certain rules is not warranted.

Then there are the omissions of apostrophes where they would normally appear. The classic example is the possessive form of it, which is not "it's" but "its". The reason for this convention was to avoid confusion with the contracted form of "it is". This seems rather unnecessary, as English is rife with identical words having radically different meanings that are readily discerned from context, as could be "it's" in this case, but there you have it. For this same reason, we avoid contractions with 'is' (ex: "The boy's going to a party" - while we might say that, we instead write "The boy is going to a party") even when technically appropriate. Then there is "won't", which we use as a contraction of "will not" even though it's a contraction of "woll not" ("woll" being an archaic form of "will"). In any case, we fail to use a second apostrophe to indicate the omission of the two l's (see what I did there?) before the n. For whatever reason, the rigid prescriptivists who demand strict adherence to other rules regarding apostrophes seem happy to ignore the numerous non-standard exceptions.

Frankly, given all of these exceptions and sub-exceptions and exceptions to the sub-exceptions governing apostrophe use in the English language, it should be glaringly obvious to anyone why the masses struggle with its correct usage.

By the way, would you characterize your unfamiliarity of the times when it is appropriate to use an apostrophe in pluralizing as 'sloppy'? Or is sloppiness solely a failing of others?

Nor does your apparent ability TO see it have any bearing.

[CA4Now]

"The Einstein's in California voted for this."