apostrophe

One thing that (excuse me) has been covered is the use of the apostrophe to indicate plural amounts of letters and numbers.

"Bs" or "B's."
"1980s" or "1980's"

Unfortunatly, this matter in a flux, and is really a question of style based on appearance and personal preference. There are conflicting reports on proper usage in this matter from several reliable sources. There is one rule that seems to be constant, however. If the letter (or group of letters) is an S or ends in S, it is proper to use the apostrophe to pluralize it, such as: "There are five S's in that word" and not "There are five Ss in that word".

It is also generally considered improper to use an apostrophe to pluralize abbreviations such as CD. This, however, also is conflicted.

The bottom line? Do it however you want to (or whichever way your teacher wants for assignments).

Apostrophe is a poetic device whereby someone starts talking to an inanimate object that the speaker knows is incapable of understanding, or to a person that the speaker knows isn't present.

From the Greek, 'αποστροφη (or apostrophê for those of you for whom this produces a string of mangled crap). Composed from the roots απω (apô), "away from," and στρεφειν (strephein), "to turn." The idea is that you "turn" "away from" one audience to another one which isn't even there.

Although one might wonder about the mental stability of those who draw too extensively on this device, it's something most of us do anyway, such as when we speak to dead relatives, or to people we know full well are out of range. I have heard it said that, especially in America, people will yell at the players in a football game they are watching on TV. This is a perfect example of apostrophe.

My python boot was too tight,
I couldn't get it off last night,
A week went by, and now it's July,
I finally got it off and my girlfriend cried...

A seminal album by Frank Zappa from March 1974. Available from Ryko, on a single CD with Over-nite Sensation.

Popularly remembered for the silly and scatological Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, Apostrophe' is a trove of virtuoso musicianship, with smoking drums and crackling horns. Some of Zappa's greatest talents were as bandleader and arranger, and despite his reputation as a weirdo he demanded the best from his musicians, and got it.

Tracks:

At one end of the square is a bar, a little more like a typical neighborhood watering hole. As I occasionally walk by there, I notice a tribute to a local baseball player, made from construction paper letters, strung up in the front window:

THANK'S
CAL

Every time I walk by this window, I am torn between the desire to run into the bar and tear the apostrophe off the string (probably resulting in my arrest), and wonder at the fact that some person lovingly cut that apostrophe out of construction paper, filled in the center with black magic marker, and glued it to the string.

Invariably, a great sadness comes over me.

A*pos"tro*phe (#), n. [(1) L., fr. Gr. a turning away, fr. to turn away; from + to turn. (2) F., fr. L. apostrophus apostrophe, the turning away or omitting of a letter, Gr. .]

1. Rhet.

A figure of speech by which the orator or writer suddenly breaks off from the previous method of his discourse, and addresses, in the second person, some person or thing, absent or present; as, Milton's apostrophe to Light at the beginning of the third book of "Paradise Lost."

2. Gram.

The contraction of a word by the omission of a letter or letters, which omission is marked by the character ['] placed where the letter or letters would have been; as, call'd for called.

3.

The mark ['] used to denote that a word is contracted (as in ne'er for never, can't for can not), and as sign of the possessive, singular and plural; as, a boy's hat, boys' hats. In the latter use it originally marked the omission of the letter e.

The apostrophe is used to mark the plural of figures and letters; as, two 10's and three a's. It is also employed to mark the close of a quotation.

© Webster 1913.