Do’s and Don’t's

It amazes me that no one in this thread has consulted the one truly essential authority here. The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (7.13–7.15) requires:

ifs and buts, dos and don'ts, threes and fours, thank-yous, maybes, yeses and nos
the three Rs, x's and y's [with the x and y italicized for letters as letters, on the model of italics for words as words], the 1990s, URLs, IRAs, BSs, MAs, PhDs, vols., eds., BUT: p., pp., n., nn., MS, MSS

For any professional copy editor working in book publishing, that is likely to settle these issues, since U.S. publishers virtually without exception follow CMS, period. Magazine and newspaper publishers have different styles in many cases.

FYI, every publisher I have ever worked for requires: the 1980s, the '80s.

The use of the apostrophe to signal pluralization for plurals of coinages, letters, numerals, and abbreviations is not a question of grammar, but of typography. It is falling by the wayside; it is a dated convention. Originally intended to forestall confusion, it is now thought by most to cause it—as evidenced by the debate above.

Nonprofessionals (formerly non-professionals) may continue to debate heartily. The rest of us have jobs to do . . .

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'Myrtle Beach Bum' is correct. The correct phrase is: Do's and don't's.

An apostrophe is used to indicate plurals of words.

Likewise you would say "Are there too many and's and but's at the start of sentences these days" .

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The rule is "use an apostrophe plus s to form the plural of letters, numbers, and words named as words." 3's, i's, t's, do's, don't's. Don't's looks ugly, but it it technically correct, I think!

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Right or wrong, the version I see most in print is "do's and don'ts". Perhaps this is because "dos" looks like Spanish for "two" or Microsoft's precursor to Windows.

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Appended "s" without apostrophe is clear and unambigious.

N.b.: I originally entered "jamescfield at cooptel dot net" in the OPTIONAL Email field. This entry was rejected as invalid (even though it was optional). I used this subterfuge to make sure that only humans (as opposed to spam-bots) could use my Email address.

Comments etc. ?

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One could also assume that Don'ts is the street term for donuts, as in, "I went out yesterday morning to get some dunkin' don'ts for my family."

Just havin' fun ;)

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whatever!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Yes, two apostrophes for "Don't's."

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Well put Angie! Dos and Don'ts is correct. (Although my spell checker suggests Don't s!)

I would love to know where the inexplicable use of apostrophes in plurals has come from. We have a professional sign writer who has proclaimed, for all to see, that we have pizza's, camera's, patio's, DVD's and CD's for sale in this town. AAARRRGGGHHH!

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Angie: "A's, B's, C's is wrong. So is 1's 2's, 3's. Or 40's (for age group) and 80's (for decade)."

I think it's far less black and white than you suppose. Would you really write "there are two Is and two Us in the word ridiculous"? Or "there are two is and two us..."? The second version in particular looks, well, ridiculous.

What about changeable sign boards that come with upper-case letters and punctuation but no lower case? I think "HALF-PRICE CD'S" looks better than "HALF-PRICE CDS". If I was walking or driving past I might wonder what a CDS is.

Sometimes apostrophes for plurals can provide clarity, and in any case I think writing A's and B's is considerably less wrong than writing banana's or avocado's.

Regarding the actual question, I'd say that either "do's and don'ts" or "dos and don'ts" is fine. Or even DOs and DON'Ts. I'd steer clear of don't's which looks like apostrophe overkill.

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I know there's a lot of resistance to using apostrophes in plurals, and that resistance is in reaction to the increasing trend of people doing just that. I think it's a unique trend that is becoming more popular thanks to the increase of technology in our culture (and language). For example, pluralizing acronyms without an apostrophe might just make it look like a word wherein the case has been mixed up. I think people might have this knee-jerk need to clarify that "CDs" isn't a word or acronym in its own right. Using an apostrophe to set off the plural "s" might not be grammatically sound, but it's serving a sort of emergency function, if that makes sense.
In this way, the phrase "dos and don'ts" has always been jarring to me. "dos" looks very much like it could be a different word entirely. I've tried some fixes, like italicizing "do" (and "don't", for the sake of consistency) but this feels like an awkward stopgap.
I'm just uneasy with the whole thing. I don't know what to do about it. Let's not overlook how interesting it is to see people creating their own avenues of expression!

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In spite of what others have posted, I would say ...don't's and ...don'ts are both correct. Do's and don't's is the older, more traditional way.

for a more complete discussion of this, see my post at:

http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.php?id=1521

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p.smith......The AAMT Book of Style is American, so I wouldn't be putting any faith in it!

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what zup..........
=)

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As a medical transcriptionist and medical editor, the AAMT Book of Style is my reference, and it states: Use 's to form the plural of lowercase abbreviations, but no apostrophe following all-capital abbreviations.

rbc's not rbcs or RBC's
WBCs
EEGs

Use 's to form the plural of single letters and symbols, i.e., serial 7's.

For numbers, add s without an apostrophe. Exception: With single numerals, add 's:

500s
She is in her 20s.
6's and 7's

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And yes, I *did* miss out that apostrophe on purpose (above)!

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lets gooooo

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what zup..........
=)

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wht the hell

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Why not extend the phrase to "What to do and what not to do", or "To do and not to do", or "You should do this, You shouldn't do it".

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You do not use an apostrophe for plural - it is for possessive or contractions only. The "Do" does not own anything and it not a contraction. Therefore, it is so simple:

Dos and Don'ts.

That's it.

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Just to make it clear: if you write "Do's" that would mean "Do is". Since we are talking about more than one (plural) things to "Do", that would be spelled "Dos". I don't say that I have five "thing's" to do today. Why is this so hard? :)

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I like the capitalization out provided by PabloCity. But I have a related dilemma with an apostrophe, this time not a plural, but two possessives:

"Kinko's poor service was notorious in the industry."

The name of the business is "Kinko's" and at some point it is going to need a possessive of the possessive. I might rephrase the above sentence for something formal, but to represent speech? I definitely do not pronounce an additional [z] in this instance, but am I besmirching the good (or bad) name of Kinko's by ignoring its actual name and not writing Kinko's's, which looks atrocious. (The same could work for McDonald's.)

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Generally the plural of word ending with an "o" is es. The use of a apostrophe is for possession or contraction. It therefore could be construed as do's uses the apostrophe appropriately to replace the missing "e". Don'ts is self explanatory.

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We live in a world of change and what was correct yesterday may not be correct today. I don't really think it matters how you spell do's and don'ts as long as the message is received correctly by the reader. It's like reading the IRS Code. There is usually an exception to the rule somewhere. Maybe it used to be "dos" until we had to deal with DOS. If you use do's just to help the reader understand that there is a list of what to do, then it's correct. "Does eat oats and mares eat oats and little lambs eat ivy." So the plural of doe is does and the plural of do is dos. Or is it do's?

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Guys, although I appreciate everyones persistence in squashing the incorrect use of apostrophes in plurals, we should remember the actual meaning of the word "apostrophe". It is *only* there to replace missing letters.

Its use to show possession is simply a result of using a single "s" for possession instead of older constructs.

Any other use, or declared "rule", is simply based on common usage. Of course, if we allow common usage to be the justification for any new rules, we might as well just put an apostrophe onto the "s" key of all keyboards, and call it a day...

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So, we can pick our own poison for pluralizing "Don't" (I may just start using Don'tses.)

What about "Do's"? It's not a missing letter, it doesn't end in an S. It ends up being a pronunciation guide.

Chris B.: I like DOs and DON'Ts, but if I'm writing a headline in all caps, then "DOS AND DON'TS FOR WALKING IN NEW YORK CITY," it looks like I'm talking about an operating system.

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Capitalizing both words is incorrect grammar. It doesn't matter if it looks more pleasing to the eye, it's still incorrect. Even for titles and headings, only the first letter of each word should be capitalized.

This is one of those special case scenarios that exact definitions fail to cover, ergo such confusion. Let's resolve this in a simple way that doesn't involve textbook definitions that somehow still leave us unsure:

For English, "dos" is not a word, so the apostrophe is needed.

Don't = do not. "Do nots" is incorrect - nots is not a word, so the apostrophe is also needed.

Just because people have always been oblivious to use "don't's" doesn't mean it's not proper use of grammar.

Do's and Don't's = correct
'80's = correct

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Oh, and "dos" as plural can be contradicted with what Chris B pointed out: "there are two Is and two Us in the word ridiculous". You see, it can be argued for both sides. "Dos" as plural needs to be re-written in the dictionary because it lists "do's" as a noun. Someone got confused at some point.

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