Re: New Debian Project Leader Chosen

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:

> And which grammatical rule suggests the apostrophes?

It's the standard rule for pluralizing single lower-case letters.  

Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed; 6.9--10:

  6.9: So far as it can be done without confusion, single or multiple
  letters used as words, hyphenated coinages used as nouns, and
  numbers (whether spelled out or in figures) form the plural by
  adding s alone:

        the three Rs                    several YMCAs and AYHs
        thank-you-ma'ams                CODs and IOUs
        in twos and threes              the early 1920s

  6.10: Abbreviations with periods, lowercase letters used as nouns,
  and capital letters that would be confusing if s alone were added
  form the plural with an apostrophe and an s:

        M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s      x's and y's     S's, A's, I's   SOS's


The Chicago manual is on the spare side about this kind of thing, many
editors will us apostrophes for the plurals in 6.9 (older rules before
the current tendency for spare style would have called for an
apostrophe).

Thomas

PS: I *love* quoting the standards document. :)  Ask me sometime and
I'll tell you about the favority time I saw a standards document
quoted on Usenet.