The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139070   Message #3188604
Posted By: MGM·Lion
15-Jul-11 - 11:57 PM
Thread Name: BS:threat to English language from Americanisms
Subject: RE: BS: the threat to the english language from
Sorry, Steve, but you are deluded, and are being absurdly prescriptive, if you think the matter that simple. Here, e.g., is the wiki entry on the topic:

===The traditional style of pluralizing single letters with the addition of 's (for example, B's come after A's) was extended to some of the earliest initialisms, which tended to be written with periods to indicate the omission of letters; some writers still pluralize initialisms in this way. Some style guides continue to require such apostrophes—perhaps partly to make it clear that the lower case s is only for pluralization and would not appear in the singular form of the word, for some acronyms and abbreviations do include lowercase letters.
However, it has become common among many writers to inflect initialisms as ordinary words, using simple s, without an apostrophe, for the plural. In this case, compact discs becomes CDs. The logic here is that the apostrophe should be restricted to possessives: for example, the CD's label (the label of the compact disc).[31]
Multiple options arise when initialisms are spelled with periods and are pluralized: for example, whether compact discs may become C.D.'s, C.D.s, CD's, or CDs. Possessive plurals that also include apostrophes for mere pluralization and periods appear especially complex: for example, the C.D.'s' labels (the labels of the compact discs). This is yet another reason to use apostrophes only for possessives and not for plurals. In some instances, however, an apostrophe may increase clarity: for example, if the final letter of an abbreviation is S, as in SOS's, or when pluralizing an abbreviation that has periods.[32][33] (In The New York Times, the plural possessive of G.I., which the newspaper prints with periods in reference to United States Army soldiers, is G.I.'s, with no apostrophe after the s.)=== [emphases mine]

You see: not so simple as you appear, delusionally, to believe; and certainly no reason for you to adopt such a crushingly positive tone.

~M~