Contrarian Grammarian

I take some pride in my mastery of grammar and spelling. Whenever you read things here that seem to violate the strict rules, it’s generally because I’ve made a conscious decision to write them in that manner. But, as with most things in which I take pride, I now find that I’m not as good as I thought.

I was thumbing through a newly acquired book entitled Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, by Patricia T. O’Conner. I ran across this rather disturbing revelation:

Add ‘s to make plurals of numbers and letters, including abbreviations.

Ouch. I once adhered to this convention, many years ago, but stopped it for some forgotten reason, deciding that the apostrophe was excess baggage. I now religiously write of “the 70s” and “CPAs” and “making As and Bs” and so on. How could I have been so wrong?

Thinking that perhaps Ms. O’Connor had spent too much time at The New York Times and thus lost touch with reality, I turned to the Bible of Such Things, Strunk & White’s (or is it “Strunk’s and White’s”?) The Elements of Style. Amazingly, if those guys addressed the issue, I couldn’t find it.

Fortunately, if one tries hard enough, one can always find support for one’s bad habits. In my case, I’ve been rescued by Atlantic Monthly columnist and editor Barbara Wallraff in her entertaining Word Count. Here’s her take on the matter; pay special attention to the penultimate phrase:

There is a convention according to which the plurals of acronyms are given apostrophes, along with the plurals of symbols and numerals (x’s and the 1990’s, for example). It’s never made sense to me, and The Atlantic doesn’t follow it, but the Times does.

There you go. If it’s good enough for Atlantic Monthly, it’s good enough for me…especially if it runs counter to what The New York Times considers correct. I mean, look how many times it’s been wrong in the past.

I’m still trying to understand what’s wrong with “Woe is me,” however. I think I’ll try to find something else to take pride in. (Was that one of those dangling whatchamacallits? Or not?)

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9 comments

  1. I recently made a deliberate decision to stop using the apostrophe if I was referring to something plural, not possessive. No reason, just decided it must be wrong (had I seen it in the NYT, I would have known for sure that it was wrong). Thank you for addressing this pressing issue!
    And do you really write religiously of CPAs? That makes me feel very special. 🙂

  2. `Woe is I’ sounds really weird.
    When we use this phrase, is `woe’ used as a noun the way we use metaphor, for eg. I am a flower, or I am a rock, etc? Then therefore, shouldn’t it be `Woe am I?”

  4. Okay, no, really, it is “woe is me,” or originally “woe unto me,” as documented in the oldest book of the Bible (Job 10:15). Who IS these people who say otherwise?

  5. And do you really write religiously of CPAs?
    I worship the very t-account you, um, debit upon.
    MisNomer, Gwynne actually has the correct usage: “woe unto me.” It’s probably helpful to remember that the “woe is me” phrase came to us courtesy of William Shakespeare, and was written before modern rules of grammar existed. So, while I certainly never would second-guess the Bard, he’s probably also not the best role model for the aspiring grammarian. 😉
    Next up: How to diagram a sentence…

  6. “Next up: How to diagram a sentence…”
    Eeek! Does that ever bring up bad memories. I’ve seen circuit diagrams that were easier to understand.

  8. Muddying the waters already stirred-up by competing grammar guides is the AP Style Manual, one of my second-tier ‘bibles’ …
    Eric, it affirms your original treatment of 70s … “use an apostraphe to show numbers that are left out …”
    Back in ’69.
    “Show plural by adding the letter s …”
    Back in the 60s.

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