Plurals of \'difficult\' proper nouns such as \"90s\"

English translation: Facilitate readability and reflect pronunciation

05:35 Jun 21, 2019

English language (monolingual) [PRO]
General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters / grammar/English usage

English term or phrase: Plurals of \'difficult\' proper nouns such as \"90s\"

I am interested in what other professionals recommend when pluralising proper nouns that have the form "[number]s", and other 'difficult' cases.

Suppose that you are required to transcribe a dialogue exactly as spoken — so there's no option to rephrase the text.

What transcription would you prefer for Person 2, below? One of the options given, or something else?

Person 1:
"I'd like to order two of the model 90, three of the model 90s, four of the MaxRadius model, five of the NanoGlass model, six of the model MegaMemory, and seven of the model WidgetKing."
Person 2:
(a) "So that's two 90s, three 90ss, four MaxRadiuss, five NanoGlasss, six MegaMemorys, and seven WidgetKings." ("s" for all)
(b) "So that's two 90's, three 90s's, four MaxRadius's, five NanoGlass's, six MegaMemory's, and seven WidgetKing's." ("'s" for all)
(c) "So that's two 90s, three 90ses, four MaxRadiuses, five NanoGlasses, six MegaMemorys, and seven WidgetKings." ("s" or "es")
(d) "So that's two "90"s, three "90s"s, four "MaxRadius"s, five "NanoGlass"s, six "MegaMemory"s, and seven "WidgetKing"s." ("s" for all, with double quotation marks)
(e) "So that's two '90's, three '90s's, four 'MaxRadius's, five 'NanoGlass's, six 'MegaMemory's, and seven 'WidgetKing's." ("s" for all, with single quotation marks)

A further option of treating the model names as if they were common [improper] nouns would only be suitable if it matched the sound of what was spoken — note that all of the preceding options sound alike.
(f) "So that's two 90s, three 90ses, four MaxRadii, five NanoGlasses, six MegaMemories, and seven WidgetKings."

This is a question inspired by another ProZ post: https://www.proz.com/kudoz/english/science-general/6673351-1... , and discussions of what to do when referring to decades, such as the 1990's/1990s, 1820's/1820s, etc..

D. I. Verrelli KudoZ activity Questions: 10 (none open) (2 without valid answers) Answers: 116 Australia
Local time: 21:08

Selected answer:Facilitate readability and reflect pronunciation

Explanation:
Those, briefly, are the criteria I would apply. I am taking you at your word: this is transcription of speech. No redrafting is allowed. You can't make them singular, for example, simply because you're writing rather than speaking, even if you think that someone would say "two ninety" rather than "two nineties" referring to a model called 90 (which I don't). We have to assume that someone said "two nineties" and work out how to write it.

Well, the first thing to say is that I doubt everyone would agree on one answer, and people certainly do take different views on how to write "awkward" plurals, especially plurals of numbers written in digits (e.g., decades). There are still plenty of people, mostly in the United States, I think, who write "the 70's". However, the general (not universal) consensus is that this apostrophe should not be used expect in certain exceptional cases, which include single letters, for example: "mind your p's and q's", "his t's are difficult to read".

This raises a general criterion: the pragmatic question of readability. Use an apostrophe to form a plural if not doing so would make it difficult to understand when read. This is not true of 1970s or even plurals of initialisms (CDs), but might well be true in some cases.

The other general point I've mentioned is reflecting pronunciation. This arises in the case of the model called 90s in your list. Surely this is pronounced "ninety-ess", not "nineties", so the plural is pronounced "ninety-esses". So maybe you should write "three 90ses". But a reader might well wonder what this means: is there a model called 90ses, of which this is a zero plural, does it mean three of model 90se, or what? So here, I think, is a very good case for an apostrophe: "three 90s's". And if we're going to use one here, I think it makes sense to use one for model 90 too: "two 90's". Personally I would favour "two 90's and three 90s's".

Incidentally, italicising the model names, as you have done, might aid clarity, but that alone would not make me dispense with the apostrophe here.

As for the others, I would treat them as common nouns, but with two provisos: (a) you must reflect how they are pronounced, and (b) the model name must remain unaltered in the plural. So "Megaradiuses", not "Megaradii" (which fails on both counts) and "MegaMemorys", not "MegaMemories" (which fails on count 2: "MegaMemories" would imply that a MegaMemory" is a kind of memory, which it isn't).

Beyond this, I don't think inverted commas are needed and I wouldn't use them, single or double.

To sum up, I wouldn't use any of your options, because I wouldn't do the same with all these models. Just because you use apostrophes in the first two (if you do) doesn't mean you should use them with all. I can't see any argument, other than consistency with the first two, for using them with the last three, which are not digits. And the consistency argument wouldn't make me do so.

"So that's two 90's, three 90s's, four MaxRadiuses, five NanoGlasses, six MegaMemorys, and seven WidgetKings."

I doubt anyone will agree with all of this!

There are many discussions of the apostrophe plural, in particular, online. Here's a useful one:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/55970/plurals-of...

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Note added at 1 hr (2019-06-21 07:33:35 GMT)
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PS. On inverted commas. I can see the argument for considering them, but I thnk they're a bad idea; you lose more than you gain in readibility. They give the text a very cluttered appearance which takes a few moments to decipher. The problem is worse, perhaps, with single inverted commas, because they can be mistaken for apostrophes. And I'm not mad about using italic. The difference between italic and upright type is not clear enough to be readily visible, and changing from italic to upright in the same word is downright awkward to read.

Selected response from:

Charles Davis
Spain
Local time: 13:08

Grading comment

Very insightful comments. Much appreciated.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED

4 +6

Facilitate readability and reflect pronunciation

Charles Davis

4 +1

keep them singular

Tony M

Discussion entries: 3

Answers

1 hr confidence:

peer agreement (net): +6

plurals of \'difficult\' proper nouns such as \"90s\"

Facilitate readability and reflect pronunciation

Charles Davis
Spain
Local time: 13:08
Meets criteria
Works in field
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in category: 572

Grading comment

Very insightful comments. Much appreciated.

Notes to answerer

Asker: Many excellent observations. Thank-you, Charles Davis. You're right about the possibility that "90ses" could be mistaken for something other than the plural for model "90s", as in your perceptive examples — only context would help to distinguish these. (In my example the context provides strong cues that some sort of plural is to be expected — which may be absent in other sentences — but even that won't help with the potential confusions that you enumerated.) Per your link to StackExchange, a few notes: (i) I deliberately chose the example "90s" with a lowercase "s", rather than "90S", as a more 'difficult' case; (ii) slightly off-topic, but I find the NY Times's advice to form plurals like "M.D.’s" & "C.P.A.’s" to be weird, and would favour "M.D’s" & "C.P.A’s", because both punctuation marks serve to indicate missing letters [cf. "M’s P." for Members of Parliament‽]; (iii) another option worth considering is to simply insert a space before the "s" — definitely a non-breaking space, and I would suggest quite a thin space (if not a hair space). I agree with you about the single quotation marks. Actually, both sets of quotation marks look pretty ugly to me in this application with plurals. I think the italic helped to clarify what I was offering (not necessarily recommending!) as options. Personally I can live with the transitions in options (a)–(e); but you'll notice I dropped the italic in option (f). If you think the contrast is weak, how would you feel about bold, or bold italic? In fact, I agree with almost everything you've said. I would prefer to be consistent in use/avoidance of apostrophes, but your counterargument is also quite persuasive.

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

agree

Tony M

8 hrs

-> Thanks, Tony!

agree

Thayenga: :)

9 hrs

-> Many thanks, Thayenga :-)

agree

Victoria Britten: I think I'd probably to for "90s" rather than "90's", but there's no arguing with that careful reasoning

15 hrs

-> Thanks very much, Victoria! I admit "90's" is debatable. I probably wouldn't do it in isolation, and I certainly don't do it for the decade, but if it occurs with the other model I think it might to clarify what's going on.

agree

Ashutosh Mitra

19 hrs

-> Thanks, Ashutosh :-)

agree

GILLES MEUNIER

2 days 20 hrs

-> Thank you, Gilou!

agree

AllegroTrans: DEFINITELY no apostrophe - reminds me of fish and chip shops selling "fish and chip's"

3 days 6 hrs

-> Thanks, Chris. Only to be used in extremis, but just occasionally it can be the lesser evil.

23 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

plurals of \'difficult\' proper nouns such as \"90s\" keep them singular

Explanation:
In the specific case you quote, simply keep them all singular, which is fairly common practice in business — it's as if you were saying '2 of the model 90-S' etc.
Regarding decades, there should be no apostrophe, unless it is abbreviated to e.g. "the '60s", or it is truly possessive: "a 1930s' bungalow" (though even that latter cases is debatbale and often ignored).

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Note added at 3 days 4 hrs (2019-06-24 09:38:54 GMT)
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In the specific instance you quote, with "installed", as an engineer, using the singular wouldn't shock me at all; we often use language like 8 × 'Super' or 8 off 'Super' etc.

There may be other situations where the plural is inevitable, but I can't offhand think of an example; perhaps soemthing like and art exhibiton, showing "8 Renoirs and 12 Dégas" (there's a special rule for creating plurals of nouns ending in 's', and specifically with French names where the final 's' is / isn't pronounced)

Tony M
France
Local time: 13:08
Meets criteria
Works in field
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 309

Notes to answerer

Asker: Hello, Tony M. I know there are ways to avoid forming the plurals, but the question is really about how to form the plurals when it becomes necessary. Transcription of recorded audio is an example where you don't have discretion to rephrase or paraphrase the text. Yes, in my example Person 2 is listing models and quantities, and some people might be inclined to just use the singular. But I'm sure there will be some cases where even you would think the plural must be used. How about, "We have ten 90 installed" versus "We have ten 90s installed" (if that's how you would write the plural)?

Asker: Hello, again. I accept your point that, esp. in engineering, it wouldn't be unusual to use the singular. I do note, however, that your two new examples — 8 × 'Super', and 8 of 'Super' — seem more attuned to written records than spoken English.

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