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Apostrophe indicates possession, not plural.
Sun, 04/05/2008 - 11:41 — zhasper
Dear SMH,
Please, please stop employing monkeys and start employing people who understand basic rules of English grammar.
No. "Three year olds" is simply plural, there's no possesion being described here - therefore no apostrophe.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised - this is the same publication that talks about "cop cars" on the front page.
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Comments
Re: Apostrophe indicates possession, not plural.
Actually, it depends on which style guide is being used at the SMH. Because the phrase "three-year-old" is hyphenated, it isn't as simple as you would have us believe.
An apostrophe can be used to indicate plural in a variety of situations. For example, what if I were talking about how many s's there are in "Mississippi"? And if I'm talking about more than one MP, should I write MPs or MP's? What about drug use in the 1960's? The use of the apostrophe in these situations is a matter of house style.
Re: Apostrophe indicates possession, not plural.
Grammar is never as simple in a real situation as I'd like it to be :) However, accepting that truth removes the possibility of prescriptive pedantic ranting, so it must instead be ignored.
In the particular instance quoted, you seem to be agreeing that it's a simple plural. "three-year-old" is not an abbreviation (as is MP), there's no contraction (as there seems to be in 1960's), and there's no ambiguity through poorly formed sentences (I'd suggest "How many times does the letter S appear in the word "Mississippi"?) - it's just a simple plural. If the house style guide claims that an apostrophe is permissible in the case of a simple plural, the house style guide is wrong.
Re: Apostrophe indicates possession, not plural.
Wrong? You've been spending far too much time with computers, my boy :)
Each case I quoted is a simple plural. As some independent verification that the apostrophe *can* be use to indicate a plural, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Use_in_forming_certain_plurals.
The apostrophe can be and is used to indicate the simple plural by some people in some cases.
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