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For abbreviations, including acronyms, the use of s without an apostrophe is now more common than its use with an apostrophe. Most modern style guides disparage the use of apostrophes in all plural abbreviations. Some references continue to condone their use, or even recommend their use in some abbreviations.
However, Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, writing about style in academic writings, [53] allows for an apostrophe to form plural acronyms "only when an abbreviation contains internal periods or both capital and lowercase letters". Turabian would therefore prefer "DVDs" and "URLs" but "Ph.D.'s".
For example, "DVDs" and "URLs" and "Ph.D.'s", while the Modern Language Association [15] explicitly says, "do not use an apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation". Also, the American Psychological Association specifically says, [16] [17] "without an apostrophe".
Most plural nouns only need an apostrophe, such as, “The dogs’ leashes.” If you’re dealing with a plural word or name that already ends in “s,” add an “-es” to the end to pluralize ...
Spacing: The letters of acronyms should not be spaced. Plurals: Plural acronyms are written with a lower-case s after the abbreviation, without an apostrophe, unless full points are used between the letters (e.g. ABCs or A.B.C.'s). Note that Wikipedia generally avoids using full point in upper-case acronyms.
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning.
Acronyms and initialisms, like other nouns, become plurals by adding -s or -es: they produced three CD-ROMs in the first year; the laptops were produced with three different BIOSes in 2006. As with other nouns, no apostrophe is used unless the form is a possessive.
) or an abbreviation (Inverness City F.C.), or when a closing round bracket or quotation mark is required (John Palmer (1814 schooner)). Whenever quotation marks or apostrophe-like variants appear, add a redirect for the same title using apostrophes. [g]