Possessive with acronyms ending in S

Except that would mean they can't be called TLAs.

"Initialisms are made up of the initial letters of words and are pronounced as separate letters: CIA (or C.I.A.), NYC, pm (or p.m.), US (or U.S.). Practice varies with regard to periods, with current usage increasingly in favor of omitting them, especially when the initialism consists entirely of capital letters. Acronyms are initialisms that have become words in their own right, and are pronounced as words rather than as a series of letters, for example, AIDS, laser, scuba, UNESCO. In many cases the acronym becomes the standard term and the full form is only used in explanatory contexts."

--Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2005

The fact that the initialism "TLA" misuses the term "acronym" doesn't mean that its misuse is correct, despite its ironic nature. Cole is right; "acronym" is still defined as a word formed from initials that are pronounced together as one word, and "initialism" is defined as an abbreviation formed from initials that are all pronounced separately.

Always use the lower case for the possesive and the plural at the end of initials, acronyms and numbers.
Please remember to use the apostrophe at the beginning of a contracted date.

e.g. In the '70s, ACS's profits were down. I think I will count my CDs.

Except......TLA doesn't stand for Three Letter Acronym. It stands for Three Letter Abbreviation, which is correct. I'm not sure when the misuse began, but I have heard this term misued in formal settings.

Please tell the difference between abbreviation,acronym and initials.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003486.html#more

I don't know if this is really definitive or relevant, but consider that the S in CMS represents the first S in Services, not the pluralizing s at the end. Would that suggest that -'s is the proper ending?

Dear Grammar Stars,
What is the proper possesive for for the abbreviation Jr.?
Would it be Jr.'s?
I'm having a hard time finding the proper answer.
Thanks!
Jim V.

All acronyms are initialisms, but not all initialisms are acronyms. That is why people commonly accept 'acronym' and tend to not even know what 'initialism' means. It's kind of the way everyone calls all forms of raw Japanese food 'sushi', even though sushi is really only the American invention of rolls. The other popular forms that we see are 'ngiri' and 'sashimi', and the three terms are not interchangeable (except among the uninformed).

TLA = Three-Letter Abbreviation/Acronym (my point being that it should be hyphenated; I'm not arguing the definition of the 'A').

The proper possesive form of 'Jr.' is Jr.'s. ('Sr.', therefore, becomes Sr.'s.)

Our animal shelter LARAS' House??? or LARAS House is an acronym for
Limestone Animal Rescue & Adoption Shelter. There is a debate among the board as to how this should read. We are trying to put up a sign and I want to do it properly but have not clue. One board member says we should use the apostrophe because it is possessive, the other says it is not necessary because it is an acronym...please help, we need the sign. Thanks Peggy W.

@Peggy Wilson: You're treating that initialism (acronym) as a name, but while this is cute, it's really not correct. Therefore, your example should very clearly be the "LARAS House" (note the prefixing "the", as well). If it was a "…Facility", it would be the "LARAF House".

And, back on the original topic: The only time an apostrophe should be used before an "s" to indicate plurality, would be if the result could be otherwise misconstrued.

A (poor) example: If I'm trying to indicate the plural of the ninth letter of the alphabet, I cannot simply indicate "is", since this would be confused with the 3rd-person singular present form of "be". Therefore: "The sign kit included several dozen lower-case tiles, six of which were i's"

But, again, this is an exception. Apostrophes are used to indicate possession; simply adding an "s" is the primary method of indicating plurality.

Actually, the original function of the apostrophe was to show a missing vowel, a use we still see today in contractions - 'I'm, he's, she'd' etc. As far as I understand, the reason that it is used for possessives is because it signals a missing e which used to be in the Old English genitive form, which ended in -es.

paulmuirhead9, good example, but you're description of sushi is a bit off. Sushi refers to the rice that accompanies the fish, not the fish itself. Sashimi is not a form of sushi, it's sashimi. The California roll was created in the U.S., but the technique of rolling is very much Japanese.

I disagree with John (from 8 years ago!). I don't know his authority on the original coinage of TLA, but it stands to reason that the A was not intended to stand for "abbreviation," as an abbreviation is primarily a shortened form of a single word (or phrase), and not what would be considered a "TLA" by most users of the term.

[Just as all acronyms are initialisms, but not all initialisms are acronyms, all acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are either acronyms or initialisms]

There would have been no reason to coin the term TLA for "Ala." or "Inc.", for example, as these are not fundamentally different from 2-letter or 4-letter abbreviations (e.g., Mass. and Co.). I think the coinage of "TLA" was a response to a preponderance of 3-word expressions (hence, 3-letter initialisms) in the decades of the 70's and 80's, perhaps particularly in the computer realm. "CPU," "GUI," "DOS," "RAM," for example. My guess is that the use of "A" for "acronym" was just a more recognizable word to most people than "I" for "initialism" would have been (my spell check doesn't recognize it, for example). And most people appreciate the humorous irony of "TLA" being a TLA, even if it is not strictly accurate, in either sense.

So with regard to acronyms/initialisms ending in 's', and assuming that " 's " is correct for the end of the word, if the initialism actually ends in an 'S', is there a rule for whether this should be written as " 's " or just " ' " - for proper nouns ending in 's', an apostrophe by itself is generally considered correct - e.g. James'

There is a lot of knowledge here, but no one seems to have answered porsches' question (although somewhat restated by Apot). If the last letter of the initialism is "S" and stands for a plural such as "services," does one show possession following the initialism with a single apostrophe or apostrophe S?

@Proper Usage - well, specifically in answer to porsche's question, here are a couple of examples:

1. AWS - Amazon Web Services. In a book called Electric Beanstalk, they explain that this is 'one of Amazon AWS's services'. They then use AWS's four times in the book, although they seem to avoid it on their own website (aws.amazon.com):

http://books.google.pl/books?id=hTPaVC6KcQAC&q=aws%27s#v=snippet&q=aws%27s&f=false

2. AHS - Alberta Health Services - In an editorial, the Calgary Herald write 'AHS’s new benchmarks must improve reporting, not obscure it'

http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Editorial+benchmarks+must+improve+reporting+obscure/8959340/story.html

3. IMLS - Institute of Museum and Library Services - on their own website they invite people to 'Submit Your Ideas on IMLS's Strategic Plan'

http://www.imls.gov/submit_your_ideas_on_imlss_strategic_plan.aspx

These were the only organisations I could find in the first five pages or so of Google which both had Services in the name and used initialisms.

IRS's, BCS's, CBS's, and probably dozens more. But I think I may have relaxed the definition of what you were looking for, Willie from Warsaw.

@Harry Boscoe - As far as I know, your examples all refer to singular nouns - Inland Revenue Service, Columbia Broadcasting System etc, which certainly answer nicolejamison's original question, and where I don't think there's much debate.

But I was specifically trying to find examples that would answer porsche's question about what happened when the last word of the initialism was a plural, eg Services.

Two really good examples - cuz they come from *huge* government bureaucracies, which wouldn't *allow* bad punctuation - are the CMS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (mentioned above, I think), and its "parent" organization, the HHS, Health and Human Services. Both of these, in their press releases, use the 's construction: "CMS's" and "HHS's". But maybe that counts as only *one* example, because I suspect the same people may be the copy editors at those two places, or they learned everything they know from each other.

And then there's also the OAS - the Organization of American States. Many many writers use "OAS's" as the possessive of that organization's initialism-with-an-s-ending-and-plural-third-word.

@Harry Boscoe - now you're talking. Here are some non-governmental sources for your examples:

Inside the OAS's Cuba Conundrum - Time Magazine
HHS's Sebelius: 'No, My Halloween Costume Is Not A Pinata' - Forbes Magazine
Can Physicians Cope With CMS’S Requirements? - PVW Health Care Law Blog

And a few others, for good measure:

A history of HUS: HDS's file-development hustle - The Register (Hitachi Data Systems)
CDS's parent company - CDS website (Clearing and Depository Services Inc, Canada)
Three elected to serve on ASTC’s Board of Directors - ASTC website (Association of Science-Technology Centers)

So between us I think we have definitively answered porsche's question.

@jnn41wms, the press releases from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services usually add 's to their acronym's possessive form. However, in some other cases, I've seen how they simply add the apostrophe. The text below was extracted from their press release published on 07/27/2015, Clarifying Questions and Answers Related to the July 6, 2015 CMS/AMA Joint Announcement and Guidance Regarding ICD-10 Flexibilities:

"No. As stated in the CMS’ Guidance, for 12 months after ICD-10 implementation, Medicare
review contractors will not deny physician or other practitioner claims billed under the Part B
physician fee schedule through either automated medical review..."

Just for the record:-

Acronym: An abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word (e.g. ASCII, NASA, LASER RADAR).

Initialism: An abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately (e.g. BBC, CIA, IBM).

How does one write the possessive form of initials ending in S and also using periods, as in C.I.S.? C.I.S.'s?

So here is my question. We are using acronyms that end is "s" How do you show them as many?

ex: Welding Procedure Specification (WPS)
Do you write WPSs, leave at WPS (can be singular or multiple), or WPS' ?

Does no one see the irony in the fact that this site offers professional proofreading services, yet they misspell the word acronym in 2 different ways? (acromym in the title and acromyn in the subtitle)

What's the right way to punctuate a plural possessive of an acronym? For instance, if you have more than one PDF, do you write "PDF's size," or "PDFs' size," or "PDFs's size"?

An acronym is a pronounceable word made up of a series of initial letters or parts of words the possessive, or the plural possessive is handled in exactly the same way as it is for all words which end in S.
I would assume that the same hold true for the possessive plural of a set of initials.
eg: RADARs range, PDFs' size

How do you properly punctuate the name of a company such as "Coffee Brewing Specialists" when you want to show possession? Is it the Coffee Brewing Specialists's team, or the Coffee Brewing Specialists' team?

Looks like both ways are fine, as long as you stay consistent:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/apostrophe-catastrophe-part-two

What about an acronym such as GAAP? it stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. If I am writing a sentence, do I treat the acronym as a plural or as a singular since the term itself is plural - i.e. principles? For instance, would I write "GAAP require" or "GAAP requires"? Thanks

@riley
"requires" and "is" are more common than "require" and "are" in published books.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=GAAP+require%2CGAAP+requires%2CGAAP+is%2CGAAP+are&year_start=1960&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CGAAP%20require%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CGAAP%20requires%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CGAAP%20is%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CGAAP%20are%3B%2Cc0

Thanks! I didn't think to look there.

I've read your discussion on acronyms and initialisms several times trying to determine the best way to show my company's name in possessive form - BIAS Corporation but without the word corporation for practical purposes. BIAS is short for Business Intelligent Application Solutions and we pronounce BIAS as a word not the initials. Can you confirm whether we should use BIAS' or BIAS's when possessive? I believe it's the latter from what I've read but would love a confirmation.

I've pasted the most relevant portion of the discussion below from March 3rd 2005:
"Initialisms are made up of the initial letters of words and are pronounced as separate letters: CIA (or C.I.A.), NYC, pm (or p.m.), US (or U.S.). Practice varies with regard to periods, with current usage increasingly in favor of omitting them, especially when the initialism consists entirely of capital letters. Acronyms are initialisms that have become words in their own right, and are pronounced as words rather than as a series of letters, for example, AIDS, laser, scuba, UNESCO. In many cases the acronym becomes the standard term and the full form is only used in explanatory contexts."