On Sun 28 Dec 2003 12:25:55p, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote in :

On this topic though, I still can't decide how to properly handle
things like "He got straight A's" or similar. Gut says apostrophe for
pluralization is *always* wrong, but "He got straight As" just doesn't
work either. Best avoided as much as possible.

Apostrophe is wrong. The second choice may look wrong but it's right.


Yeah, it's wrong but I think we might be watching the language change right
before our eyes, like "beg the question" did back in the last century. :-)

At work, we often discuss things that have acronym names, like the three
four S, spelled 34S. And we have the thirty-four; 34. In emails, it's a lot
clearer to use apostrophes when we have plural of the 34. "Let's get one
34s out to customer B and three 34's to customer C." is a lot less
confusing than "We need one 34s for customer B and two 34s for customer C."
With acronyms being used so much, we've taken to using apostrophes just so
we can get the message across quickly and I think that's happening in a lot
more places than ours. In this case it might be a case of the needs of the
language changing more than laziness.

Dan