Editor's Corner

Yesterday someone asked me how to make an acronym plural. Is it CDs or CD’s? (The plural is CDs; the possessive is CD’s. Of course, there are some exceptions as explained below.)

This article from Grammar Girl (www.quickanddirtytips.com) is about something similar.

"Dos and Don’ts" or "Do’s and Don’ts"?

What’s the Trouble? The spelling of do’s and don’ts is inconsistent.

Generally, you don’t use apostrophes to make words or abbreviations plural (e.g., CDs, 1970s, hats), but we have a few exceptions. For example, you can use apostrophes when they help eliminate confusion, which happens most often with single letters. Mind your p’s and q’s is the typical spelling, and we write that the word aardvark has 3 a’s, not 3 as.

Dos and don’ts is an especially unusual exception. The apostrophe in the contraction don’t seems to make people want to use an apostrophe to make do plural (do’s and don’ts) but then to be consistent, you’d also have to use an apostrophe to make don’t plural, which becomes downright ugly (do’s and don’t’s).

Style guides and usage books don’t agree.

• The Chicago Manual of Style and others recommend dos and don’ts [KC – Even though we use the CMOS as our guide here in San Diego, I would toss this recommendation out of the window. I agree with the two resources
  below because I think the primary idea is to use whatever makes it clearest. With the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S., I see “dos” and thing “two,” not the plural of the word “do.” Anyway, this is how we do it, baby.]
• The Associated Press and others recommend do’s and don’ts
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves recommends do’s and don’t’s

What Should You Do? Unless your editor wishes otherwise, if you write books, spell it dos and don’ts; and if you write for newspapers, magazines, or the Web, spell it do’s and don’ts. If you’re writing for yourself, spell it any way you want. [KC – Your editors here “wish otherwise” so please use “do’s and don’ts.”]

Kara Church

Senior Technical Editor