Date   : Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:22:27 +0100 (BST)
From   : Andrew W <a.weston2@...>
Subject: Re: Signitures

In <URL:news:local.misc> on Thu 14 Oct, Jeremy Grayson wrote:

> It only looks odd because people sociolinguistic progress (or decay,
> depending on opinion) has determined that people have got out of the habit
> of seeing something like "micros" written without the apostrophe. The stone
> cold academic rule of thumb here is that of all the West Indo-European
> varieties (German, Dutch and English), only Dutch permits the use of
> apostrophes in noun plurals of any description, and even then only in
> certain instances. I'll need someone like Wouter or Eelco to remind me of
> the rules - I thought it was to do with plurals of nouns imported into the
> Dutch language and ending in a vowel, eg de auto's, but it's nine years now
> since I stopped studying Dutch, and in any case I'm thick as two short
> plank's.
> 
So you're saying it's wrong in English to write something like 1970's?
I thought apostrophes were used to indicate abbreviations like 'til or
fish 'n' chips?




A.Weston
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