How to not write bad - Ben Yagoda 2013

Punctuation - Plurality’s Pluralities
How to not write wrong

Punctuation isn’t sexy, but it’s actually a key to not-bad writing. That’s because of the concept I discussed at the end of the last chapter, “mindful writing.” You can dismiss apostrophes—and punctuation in general—as just a series of technical details. I prefer to look at them as measures of mindfulness. When you write carelessly or automatically—mindlessly, that is—the chances of apostrophizing correctly are pretty slim. They steadily improve as you begin to pay attention.

An easy thing to remember is not to use apostrophes—ever—to indicate a plural, no matter how tempting it seems. Doing so will get you pilloried in a book like Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

[They have three TV’s on the first floor and four on the second, so if you don’t like what’s on, you can just walk into another room!]

Should be TVs, just as it should be IOUs, SUVs, and C.D.s. (The first two examples don’t have periods between the capital letters; the third does. That’s a matter of house style and will vary by publication. The rule about no apostrophe before the s is the same in either case.)

The same goes for decades and centuries, which are in fact plurals (an accumulation of ten years for a decade, 100 for a century). Some publications countenance the 1800’s or the 60’s, but it’s wrong. The 1960s, the ’60s, and the sixties are all okay, as long as you’re consistent.

A small number of students instinctively and wrongly reach for the apostrophe to indicate the plural of a y-ending word: several country’s instead of several countries. The move is a bit more understandable with proper nouns, but equally incorrect. That is, the correct forms are:

Six Kennedys attended the ceremony.

and

Over his career he’s won seventeen Grammys.

Other writers mess up by pluralizing y-ending words when the intention is merely to indicate a possessive:

[When the mom took away the babies’ pacifier, he started crying.]

When the mom took away the baby’s pacifier, he started crying.

And that brings us to the next topic.