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Pter Posted 18 years ago
Grammar

Plural of s = s'es?

0 We can form plurals of English alphabets by adding an apostrophe and an s, e.g.02br
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00Mind your p's and q's.02br
00Cross your t's and dot your i's.02br
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00I just want to make sure if I am right in the following:02br
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00There are two s'es in the sentence.02br
00There are two PSes in the meeting. (PS is a short form of something.)02br
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00Am I correct? 0-
  

Top answer

0There are two s'es in the sentence. )02br 02b 0-

— Yoong Liat

  • 0There are two s'es in the sentence.
  • )02br 02b 0-
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17 Answers
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0There are two s'es in the sentence. 01b00( It should be s's.)02br
02b00There are two PSes in the meeting.01b00 ( It should be PS's.)02br
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0 Hi Yoong Liat,02br
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00May I ask why you think it should be s's and PS's?02br
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00For the second one, style guides I read do not recommend using apostrophe for plurals of abbreviations although some people do use them. 0-
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01cite10Pter12cite10Hi Yoong Liat,12br
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10May I ask why you think it should be s's and PS's?12br
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10For the second one, style guides I read do not recommend using apostrophe for plurals of abbreviations although some people do use them.12blockquote
11b00What I've found s
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0 Sorry Yoong Liat, I think I didn't made it clear. The abbreviation of PS was made up arbitrarily. I didn't mean postscript. I could have used anything like BS, CS, DS, etc. in my question.02br
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00Regarding the apostrophe for abbreviations, let me quote some of the references I've read:02br
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01b00The Columbia Guide to Standard American E
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01cite10Pter12cite10Sorry Yoong Liat, I think I didn't made it clear. The abbreviation of PS was made up arbitrarily. I didn't mean postscript. I could have used anything like BS, CS, DS, etc. in my question.12br
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10Back to my original question. What I would like to ask is whether I should use "s" or "es", i.e. the c
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01cite10Yoong Liat12cite102a. There are two s's in the sentence. (11b10The modern tendency is to add 11i10-s12i10 to pluralise a word. However, the 11i10-'s12i10 is still common. I would write 11i10s's 12i10because11i10 ss12i10 looks odd.)
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0Hi Pter02br
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00Thanks. That's where I am confused. I thought the pronunciation need to match the spelling and therefore "es". Now I know that this is not necessary. I just checked my pronouncing dictionary and surprised to find that it lists all the pronunciations of the plurals of all the 01b0026 alphabets02b00. The plural of s is s's, and th
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0No one told me that before!!! 02br
00This must be a very common mistake made by Chinese speakers. Perhaps, because there is no such thing as a Chinese alphabet. 02br
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00 (missing image) 02br
02br
00 (missing image) 00 (missing image)
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0There are other languages with their own alphabet, but I don't know how many languages have alphabets. Perhaps another member can enlighten me. Mandarin has no alphabet.0-
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0Anyway, why we need a plural for PS? A postscript is a short remark. Although it is possible that the "short" remark is not that short and may have more than one paragraph, it is still one short remark. Two paragraphs don't make it two postscripts. 01i00I was told that an additional PS added after the original PS is PPS - 01b00Post-Postscript. 01font
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