POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Typo's in the 3.7 Installe'r an'd PO'V we'b sit'e : Re: Typo's in the 3.7 Installe'r an'd PO'V we'b sit'e Server Time
29 May 2024 05:56:00 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Typo's in the 3.7 Installe'r an'd PO'V we'b sit'e  
From: clipka
Date: 6 Jul 2015 11:01:57
Message: <559a9865@news.povray.org>
Am 06.07.2015 um 14:42 schrieb scott:
>> I had to change PCs, and thus had to reinstall POV.
>>
>> At the end of the install, it asks if we want to install the editor
>> "DLL's" and sends us to the POV site where we can download the "DLL's"
>>
>> Excpet plurals don't use apostrophes.  It should be "DLLs".
>
> Except not always. DLL's is acceptable, DLLs is also ok, as is the fact
> that there are too many e's in this sentence, or that so many 6's come
> up when I roll dice.
>
> Usually you'd use an apostrophe for an acronym plurar to avoid any
> possible ambiguity (eg if "DLLS" was an equally valid acronym, you
> wouldn't write DLLs for a plural). In this case though I don't think it
> matters.

The use of apostrophes for plural of both all-caps and all-digits 
"words" to avoid ambiguity seems to have been common teaching some 
decades ago (to my surprise; maybe it was an American thing), but 
according to Oxford Dictionaries (not to be confused with the OED, from 
which I couldn't find an answer) nowadays it is being strongly discouraged:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/apostrophe

It might have had to do with old information technology where lowercase 
letters were not always available. (Telegraphy, anyone?)


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