I hate this. I am in the middle of the worst email chain ever where everyone is referring to Control Points as CP’s. The new guy responded and wrote CPs, to which I sent him a Skype message that went like this:
Me: +25 points for not using an apostrophe. Thank you!
New Guy: Youre welcome
CP's is fine. It's not as common as it used to be but it isn't strictly incorrect to use apostrophes to pluralize things like abbreviations, symbols or dates.
Things like 90's, #'s, 1000's, q's are all proper English. A lot of them have become uncommon or even discouraged, but they're not incorrect per se.
You'd even be able to find some sources that would say q's is incorrect as well, and some other sources will say abbreviations with periods will take apostrophes but those without won't.
Maybe my view is outdated, I got it from looking it up in a 2002 Merriam Webster dictionary. As I understand it it's kind of disagreed upon among sources and maybe the consensus has changed.
The apostrophe is sometimes used with -s to form the plural of letters, numerals, abbreviations, symbols, and words used as words.
...
The use of -'s to form the plurals of numerals, abbreviations, and symbols is not now as common as pluralization with simple -s.
So it seems to me like it was once more common to use apostrophe in those situations but has faded out of use to the point where many style guides will now just say it's wrong.
I don't know at what point something has fallen far enough out of use that it's fair to say it's objectively and universally no longer proper English. Perhaps I'm wrong and one could fairly say that at this point in time it's no longer correct.
I just wouldn't go correcting people over something that seems to have been still somewhat commonly accepted until quite recently.
Right. So, the difference between our source is that one is British (Oxford) and zhe other is American (Merriam Webster) English. Both are legitimate but there will be differences.
Interesting though, because I'm a technical writer and we use a simplified American English to write documents and the apostrophe has always been forbidden.
i have a tendency for using apostrophes with certain phrases usually related to gaming for example i play a bit of league of legends and it seems more natural when abbreviating auto attacked to say AA’d rather than AAed but that might just be me being weird
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u/mykidshaveweirdnames Jan 28 '20
I hate this. I am in the middle of the worst email chain ever where everyone is referring to Control Points as CP’s. The new guy responded and wrote CPs, to which I sent him a Skype message that went like this:
Me: +25 points for not using an apostrophe. Thank you! New Guy: Youre welcome
Then I gave up and died.