Iraqi's in Baghdad topple a huge statue of Saddam wednesday evening (baghdad time) with the help of a US armored vehicle.

And a few blocks away, other "Iraqi's" (sic) are still giving their lives to fight against U.S. forces. Guess they missed the memo about the whole "Saddam's regime is history" thing.

Did you mean "Iraqi is celebrate"?
Or did you perhaps mean "The celebrate belonging to Iraqi"?

Your apostrophe license is revoked. Please remove the keycap and send it to...

Did you mean "Iraqi is celebrate"?
Or did you perhaps mean "The celebrate belonging to Iraqi"?

Iraqis are celibate?

I meant "Many citizens of Iraq celebrate in Baghdad."

The apostrophe and 's' were used to pluralify Iraqi, as it would be used in POW's, but obviously I made a mistake, and the apostrophe was not needed in this instance, and it was incorrect usage of it. I apologize to any punctuation marks that were harmed in this incident.

Your apostrophe license is revoked

I don't need a license. It's my God given right to use apostrophe's (apostrophes?). And I'm sure there are at least a dozen apostrophe's in the Bill of Rights. You'll have to pry my apostrophe from my cold dead keyboard.

apostrophe's (apostrophes?).

"apostrophes" -- it's the plural, it's not a contraction, and it's not possessive.

The apostrophe and 's' were used to pluralify Iraqi

Pluralize. Your "POW" example is a good one. Not all people documenting rules of English recognize it, and I was taught both ways. Notably, pluralizing an acronym or a referenced item (typically a letter or a symbol) allows use of an apostrophe. The POW example you cited is an example of the former, and not a required use of an apostrophe in all sources. An example of the latter would be:

We dotted the i's, but still need to cross the t's on the new contract.

I'm not familiar with any sources which do not require this use for an apostrophe, but I may be painfully unaware. Note also:
GOOD
1990s
'70s (contraction of 1970s)

BAD
1990's
70's (unless it's a business named 1990, or something with a "handle" of 70, or such)

So this can be generalized as:
-Do not use apostrophes when pluralizing.
-Do use apostrophes when indicating any singular possessive. (My parent's car, if I had only one parent)
-Do use an apostrophe when indicating a plural possessive, but do not add a trailing s if the word already has an s for pluralization. (My parents' house, if I have more than one parent; The children's room.)

Expect ridicule if you open a restaurant and call it "Food's Express", unless your name is John Food.

as it would be used in POW's

Here (and I'm winging it a little), the apostrophe is used because it's an abbreviation (actually an acronym), so the apostrophe is used for the contraction.

However, I believe that apostrophes on plural acronyms are falling out of favour, much as the dots between the letters have.

In particular, POWs would expand to "Prisoners of War", so why is the "s" at the end, and why the apostrophe?

Do use apostrophes when indicating any singular possessive

...except for "its". His doesn't have an apostrophe (hi's), so why should its (it's)?

I don't need a license. It's my God given right to use apostrophe's (apostrophes?)

While I don't recall any biblical references specifically giving right to use this overutilized creature, I'll note that apostrophes are not owned by apostrophe, though you did spell the word right when you parenthesized it, presumably to indicate you were uncertain of the spelling.

And I'm sure there are at least a dozen apostrophe's in the Bill of Rights.

Did it give them rights of ownership?

You'll have to pry my apostrophe from my cold dead keyboard.

At least you got this one right. Of course, I suspect like the one in front of me, your keyboard is already dead.

I'm oversimplifying. I probably shouldn't. I also shouldn't have neglected to mention contractions explicitly rather than implicitly. And it was bad of me to simplify in this manner, as I'd rather see too few apostrophes than too many.

If you want to get complicated, I found Strunk's Elements of Style online:
http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#1

How did this get started (and ended) without me?

There's a lot of debate on whether apostrophes should be used when pluralizing non-standard words. My personal rule of thumb is not to use it unless it becomes difficult to understand what's being talked about. And I usually use quotes when talking about a word or a sequence of letters, so that obviates the need for an apostrophe there.

How did this get started (and ended) without me?

I've been rabidly anti-apostrophe-abuse long before I owned an empeg, or knew who you were.

However, I believe that apostrophes on plural acronyms are falling out of favour, much as the dots between the letters have.

Oh. I would have said that the apostrophe was once used only in specific circumstances (when its absence would cause ambiguity, i.e. when the s would otherwise cleave too closely to the abbreviation: we awarded five MScs this year) but nowadays is increasing in use. The old old way to do it was to repeat the last letter: pp for pages, mss for manuscripts.

In particular, POWs would expand to "Prisoners of War", so why is the "s" at the end, and why the apostrophe?

Would you rather write PsOW? As the its-vs-it's thing shows, clarity and lack of ambiguity beat consistency every time in this game.

Peter

Obligatory "The Onion" article for this discussion...

NEW YORK--Stopping for lunch at a Manhattan Burger King, New York Times 'On Language' columnist William Safire ordered two "Whoppers Junior" Monday. "A majority of Burger King patrons operate under the fallacious assumption that the plural is 'Whopper Juniors,'" Safire told a woman standing in line behind him. "This, of course, is a grievous grammatical blunder, akin to saying 'passerbys' or, worse yet, the dreaded 'attorney generals.'" Last week, Safire patronized a midtown Taco Bell, ordering "two Big Beef Burritos Supreme."

I love this BBS. What might have become a political discussion has turned into a grammar discussion.

So if I were going to pluralize SSN, would it be SSNs or SSN’s? I use this a lot in my work, so I’d really like to know which version is correct.

Some people will argue for one, some for the other. I'd go with SSNs, as it's still perfectly clear what you're talking about. The basic rule about apostrophes is that they're used to indicate possession or to indicate contraction, not to pluralize.

But no one would crucify you if you went the other way, as it's also sometimes used to indicate pluralization of acronyms and abbreviations, and pretty much must be used when a simple trailing `s' is unclear.

The Americans seem to get knocked down a lot on this BBS, but one thing they are very good at, is fixing the English language.

What is needed is a character (or characters) that indicate(s) that the attached word is pluralized. Something like *person or person[].

What is needed is a character (or characters) that indicate(s) that the attached word is pluralized.

I coulda sworn that, with a few exceptions, that's what `s' did.

I coulda sworn that, with a few exceptions, that's what `s' did.

And it's the reason that there are only four "S"'s (???) in Scrabble, which is very frustrating. They should have just made plurals not count and put in a reasonable number of "S" pieces.

But then you wouldn't get to use ``oxen'' or ``children'' or ``alumni'' or ``criteria'' or ``dice'' or ``algae'' or ``graffiti'' or the various other irregular and ``irregular'' plurals.

Maybe a rule against using simple `-s' plurals.

Hmm, never new they did that. That certainly is lame. Do they also limit the number of Es and Rs so you can't make dumb -> dumber? Then you need to limit the number of Ts so you can't make dumb -> dumbest... You're right, they just shoulda made a rule against plurals.

To be fair, I dont know that's why there are only four; I just assume it because it would seem there should be a lot more.

Do they also limit the number of Es and Rs so you can't make dumb -> dumber?

Yeah, it's more than just that, though.

To win really seriously at Scrabble, you need bingos. (For those out of the loop, a Bingo is when you lay down all seven letters to form a word, earning you an additional 50 points above and beyond the normal score for the play.)

To do that, you need to hoard E's, R's and S's because they allow you to turn smaller words into bingos in multiple flexible ways. Thus allowing you to squeeze the bingo onto the board combined with the other words. E R and S are most flexible because the RE can be a prefix or a suffix to many words.

Example: "work" with ERS could become "reworks" or "workers" depending on the board layout.

Of course, if you hoard too much and make sucky plays the whole rest of the game, then a bingo isn't going to save you. It's all very strategic...

Something like *person or person[].

Isn't it considered rude to *person?

Not as rude as it is to !person. At least in public.

I've only ever seen that (never knew it was called a "bingo") a few times. But my wife did it once (and I don't remember the word) where she managed to cover two triple word scores as well. My father and I both quit at that point.