Quote:
Originally Posted by DMB
The apostrophe s for plurals is known in Britain as the "greengrocer's apostrophe", presumably because practitioners of that trade would put out handwritten notices in front of their shops saying things like "juicy plum's 1s 6d per lb".
British writer Lynn Truss wrote an amusing book about misuse of punctuation. |
I read this book several years ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy. However, I think I remember this book discussing that it was more common to use apostrophes with acronyms and dates (like the 1980's) and other plural non-words in America than in England. Differences in how we use punctuation with quotes (e.g. period/fullstop inside or outside) or the use of single versus double quotes are other items that stick in my memory from this book.