Date   : Fri, 15 Oct 2004 07:51:37 +0100
From   : M P Churchill <mpc1@...>
Subject: Re: Signitures

In message <Marcel-1.53-1015002227-b49zokP@...> you wrote:

> 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?

It's always incorrect (strictly speaking) as nothing has been missed
out. It's also possibly confusing when one says "the 1900s" which means
either 1900 to 1909 or 1900 to 1999 (and it is usually taken to mean
the latter even if the former is intended), when one means either "the
20th century" which is 1901 to 2000 or "the first decade of the 20th
century" which is 1901 to 1910.


> I thought apostrophes were used to indicate abbreviations like 'til or
> fish 'n' chips?

Just so. Letters have been omitted. 


-- 
Malcolm