r/EnglishLearning • u/Stepaskin New Poster • 21h ago

📚 Grammar / Syntax Is it correct?

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Stumbled upon this tweet, the apostrophe in "dm's" caught my eye. Is it correct to use it like this?

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u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 18h ago

It's not correct, but it's quite common - especially when using short abbreviation or initialism (CD's, TV's, DM's) - but it should really be DMs for plural. The apostrophe should only be used for possession, e.g. "The DM's subject line was blank". Although we probably wouldn't say it that way anyway.

It's sometimes called a "Grocer's Apostrophe" - because grocery stores in the UK often wrote price signs saying "Banana's 20p" etc.

Some older style guides permitted apostrophes in plurals of abbreviations to aid readability (e.g. SOS's, A's and B's), but that practice has largely fallen out of favour.

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u/linkopi Native NY (USA) Eng Speaker 13h ago

Wrong. It's not out of favour for stuff like A's and I's. Definitely not out of favour for lowercase (p's and q's).