Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

Shane Davis

Member Since

February 7, 2012

Total number of comments

1

Total number of votes received

6

Bio

Latest Comments

Do’s and Don’t's

  • February 7, 2012, 5:13pm

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!