Submitted by barnes  •  July 20, 2010

Plural of Yes

How do I correctly write YES as a plural. Example: # of Yes’s.

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I'd be more inclined to go for 'yes's as then you are acknowledging that there technically is no plural of 'yes'

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Retired English Teacher: I believe your rule applies only to numbers (in numeral form, not spelt out) and single letters, not words. So your first example (3's) is correct, but your second (that's) isn't. It's yeses.

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Glad retired English teacher is retired. A bit of work on apostrophes and use of italics required. See me after class. Yeses, as in buses.

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Too funny, before I looked at this website, I sent a response to a coworker using every single answer on this page...Wow what a pain the in the english! Thanks for your approval...

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My original instinct was yeses. As long as its acceptable - I'm happy.

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Vot or me please

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Yesses is correct

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There is one snag to this discussion. When referring to an actual word or number, the word is italicized and then an apostrophe s is added. For example, My phone number has two 3's in it. You have too many that's in your sentence. So I think it should be yes's. But then there is the rule that when a noun ends in s, the plural is formed by adding -es. So it could be yes'es but that looks funny. I will check various dictionaries.

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yes plural is AYES, this is correct

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AGREED... ?

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The Oxford American Dictionary accepts both yeses and yesses. Also gases and gasses. Compare "bus" and "buses" and I think "yeses" gets the win.

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The correct plural is yeses. Nouns ending in -s (focus or excess, for example) generally are made plural simply by adding -es.

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I believe "Yesses" is correct. It looks really funny, I know.

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