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arundelo comments on The Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem - Less Wrong Discussion

63 Post author: lukeprog 18 January 2012 10:30PM

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Comment author: arundelo 20 January 2012 04:47:11PM *  5 points [-]

Apostrophes are not used to form plurals. (Some style guides give some exceptions, but this is not one of them.) The plural of "typo" is "typos". "Typo's" is a word, but it's the possesive form of "typo" (so it's not the word you want here).

(Ninja edit: better link.)

Comment author: tetsuo55 20 January 2012 06:50:43PM 0 points [-]

Thanks that helped. Too bad the spellchecker missed it.

Comment author: prase 20 January 2012 04:58:44PM 0 points [-]

In what circumstances we use 's to form a plural? The link doesn't appear to suggest any.

Comment author: arundelo 20 January 2012 05:22:35PM 3 points [-]

Rule 11:

Exception:
Use apostrophes with capital letters [sic -- the first example uses a lowercase letter] and numbers when the meaning would be unclear otherwise.

Examples:
Please dot your i's.
You don't mean is.

If you were looking at the link I posted before editing my comment, search for "tired" and "DO use the apostrophe to form the plural".

My 1992 Little, Brown Handbook says:

Use an apostrophe plus -s to form the plurals of letters, numbers, and words named as words.

That sentence has too many but's.

Remember to dot your i's and cross your t's, or your readers may not be able to distinguish them from e's and l's.

At the end of each chapter the author had mysteriously written two 3's and two &'s.

[...]

Exception: References to the years in a decade are not underlined [italicized] and often omit the apostrophe. Thus either 1960's or 1960s is acceptable as long as usage is consistent.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 January 2012 04:42:30AM *  1 point [-]

Examples: Please dot your i's. You don't mean is.

Correct or not, the style guide is lame. A clearly superior way to prevent the ambiguity with unfortunate clear default is to use single quotes on both side of the 'i'. So 'i's, not i's.

Comment author: prase 20 January 2012 10:32:53PM 0 points [-]

I've missed that, thanks.

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