Josh found what grammarian Lynne Truss calls the "greengrocer's apostrophe," so named because of those handwritten signs in markets that announce Carrot's or Apple's. No apostrophe is needed to pluralize these words.
In fact, the apostrophe is hardly ever used for plurals. The apostrophe indicates possession (e.g. Josh's letter) or missing characters, as in contractions (don't, won't) or in numeric references (hits of the ‘90s). The apostrophe has a few other minor roles, but these two tasks are the big ones.
There are a lot of times when using the apostrophe to make a plural seems needed, but isn't. Referencing decades doesn't require an apostrophe; it's simply 1990s. Same thing goes for initialisms: CDs, DVDs and PCs, for example. Putting family names in the plural doesn't require apostrophes, either; Morrissey and Marr had it right when they called their band The Smiths. For days of the week, just add s: rainy days and Mondays. And words ending in vowels don't use apostrophes to become plural. The word pro simply becomes pros. Words like tomato take on es to become tomatoes.
The rare times when apostrophes are used for plurals happen in specific phrases involving certain well-worn letters or words, as in "Customer service do's and don'ts." That's really about it. Meanwhile, gross words like "bacterium" and "fungus" have specific rules about plurals, none of which use the apostrophe.
The best rule of thumb is to avoid apostrophes when pluralizing words and just add s or es. It saves time. It saves keystrokes. It may save Josh the cost of a postage stamp.
[Download the complete podcast here - it's quite different from this article.]
Sources: Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss; The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White; The Bloomsbury Grammar Guide by Gordon Jarvie; The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin.
Songs from this Episode: "Act of the Apostle" by Belle and Sebastian; "Spin the Bottle" by the Juliana Hatfield Three; "Panic" by the Smiths.
About Grammar Grater
Grammar Grater is a weekly podcast from Minnesota Public Radio that looks at English words, grammar and usage in a time when everybody's a writer. And with the global nature of communication, there's not a single style guide everyone uses. Each week, host Luke Taylor and the Grammatis Personae Players (Cory Busse and Amy Ault) take a lighthearted approach to language by putting common linguistic bugbears through the Grammar Grater.
You can learn more about the podcast here and you can subscribe to the podcast by clicking this link: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/tools/podcasts/grammar_grater.xml
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Comments: 9
Listen for the follow-up podcast (and its companion article here on Gather) in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for the comment!
I read and enjoyed Lynne Truss' book. I still don't understand why CDs doesn't take the apostrophe. Isn't CD's a contraction for Compact Discs?
Thanks to both of you, Rafael and Ann, for your comments!
Thanks, Luke.
There was formerly a respectable tradition (17-19c) of using the apostrophe for noun plurals, especially in loanwords ending in a vowel (as in We do confess Errata's, Leonard Lichfield, 1641, and Comma's are used, Philip Luckcombe, 1771) and in the consonants s, z, ch, sh, (as in waltz's and cotillions, Washington Irving, 1804). Although this practice is rare in 20c standard usage, the apostrophe of plurality continues in at least five areas:
(1) with abbreviations such as V.I.P.'s or VIP's, although such forms as VIPs are now widespread.
(2) With letters of the alphabet, as in His i's are just like his a's and Dot your i's and cross your t's. In the phrase do's and don'ts, the apostrophe of plurality occurs in the first word but not the second, which has the apostrophe of omission: by and large, the use of two apostrophes close together (as in don't's) is avoided.
(3) In decade dates, such as the 1980's, although such apostrophe-free forms as the 1980s are widespread, as are such truncations as the '80s, the form the '80's being unlikely.
(4) In family names, especially if they end in -s, as in keeping up with the Jones's, as opposed to the Joneses, a form that is also common.
(5) in the non-standard ('illiterate') use often called in BrE the greengrocer's apostrophe, as in apple's 55p per lb and We sell the original shepherds pie's (notice in a shop window, Canterbury, England).
[...]
...it appears from the evidence that there was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear-cut and known, understood, and followed by most educated people.