joanna bujes wrote:
> Now, I'm doing it. So, all you current/former English teachers and
> editors: is it EVER correct to specify a plural ending with an 's???
Sure, after acronyms and numbers: The 60's, NGO's. It's in transition at the moment. Some people write them without apostrophe's (only kidding) and some people with. The logic is that the apostrophe marks the end of something that isn't a real word to which an -s has been artificially added. You see the same thing in rebus puzzles where 's's are used after pictures.
I think the non-apostrophe form looks cooler. But unfortunately I've found when I'm editing that it often makes me do a double take, which for me is the indisputable sign of bad punctuation. Since the apostrophe form never does, I've come to accept it as the form of choice. It might be kludgy, but it works.
Michael