Век живи, век учись
Jul. 21st, 2009 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riontelPeople in telecommunications industry don't use acronyms, they talk in them and what's worse, write in them. Naturally, every once in a while one runs into the need of pluralizing an acronym. In speech it's not an issue, in writing there are two obvious options: add -s or add 's. I personally prefer the former case but can live with things like NAS's. However, seeing plural of codec written as codec's bugged me to such an extent that I went ahead and asked Google for an opinion. Here is what wiki has to say on the subject:
Acronyms are initialisms used as if they are words. Clearly, it is not desirable to pluralize the acronym laser as laser's. Thus, the most consistent approach for pluralizing acronyms is to simply add a lowercase -s as a suffix. This works well even for acronyms ending with an s, as with CASs (pronounced "kazzes"), while still making it possible to use the possessive form (-'s) for acronyms without confusion. The traditional style of pluralizing single letters with -'s was naturally extended to acronyms when they were commonly written with periods. This form is still preferred by some people for all initialisms and thus -'s as a suffix is often seen in informal usage.
Having learned something new, I felt compelled to share.
Acronyms are initialisms used as if they are words. Clearly, it is not desirable to pluralize the acronym laser as laser's. Thus, the most consistent approach for pluralizing acronyms is to simply add a lowercase -s as a suffix. This works well even for acronyms ending with an s, as with CASs (pronounced "kazzes"), while still making it possible to use the possessive form (-'s) for acronyms without confusion. The traditional style of pluralizing single letters with -'s was naturally extended to acronyms when they were commonly written with periods. This form is still preferred by some people for all initialisms and thus -'s as a suffix is often seen in informal usage.
Having learned something new, I felt compelled to share.
