Apostrophe Question
Posted: Tue 2 February, 2010 Filed under: Literacy, Pedantry 4 Comments »One for the pedants out there (you know who you are) because for once I’m just not sure…
In Homebase over the weekend, I ended up looking at seed potato sets. I know, what a classy life. Anyway, reading the back (Hey, I was bored) I saw this…
Is this apostrophe errant or not?
I know that an apostrophe is used in the case of compressions (i.e. “there is” becoming “there’s”) but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t apply in the case of an abbreviation.
So to my knowledge this apostrophe is incorrect, but equally I’ve been known to be wrong on these finer points…
So – am I right? Or is this OK?
It is actually considered to be correct, in some circles anyway. I’d argue that it is one of these things that prescriptive rules don’t address adequately. There is an argument that apostrophes of this type can be used in plurals of letters and numbers, e.g. b’s, d’s and the 1960’s. However, this, I think, causes an element of confusion with genitive markers (denoting possession), e.g. John’s book, the dog’s bowl.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/nouns/genmark.htm
This is definitely not a contraction (compression as you called them) as when you expand the contraction it is grammatically unsound.
“There are literally hundreds is of(…)”
It appears it is a cardinal number version of hundreds which has been apostrophized as 100’s. It is correct. Though, personally, I’d prefer 100s, 1960s and so on. When no apostrophe marking is present in plural letters however, it does look a mess, e.g. bs, ds, as?
Apostrophes, not worth the hassle half the time.
I agree with the gist of the above. It’s from the same camp as 1900’s etc, which is generally considered to be an outdated usage (though not incorrect), nowadays.
I’d write it without, if that helps… 😉
Oh – and – regarding seed potatoes, don’t you have any small garden centres near you? Many of them will let you pick and mix from open boxes so you don’t have to be restricted to big nets which are probably more than you actually want of each type. Also likely to come from better sources than Homebase’s…
Well I don’t need loads, and these were packs of five, so not too bad.
Last year we got them from another company, and they were fucking disastrous, so went for Homebase this year, see what happens.
Next year I’ll probably get them from yet another place. We’re just seeing which ones come up with the best results.