Seeking Grammar Police Ruling - Typo's

[Carol]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:
>
> ---  Lee Kaiwen <leekaiwen@> wrote:
> >
 bboyminn:
> 
> But that is my very point, I'm not saying that "'s" pluralizes
> anything. I'm saying it /contracts/ a phrase already ending in
> "s"; 'TYPOgraphical errorS'. 
> 
> Consider, for example "int'l" for 'international'. The "'l"
> logically doesn't make it plural, it simply says that between
> the "t" and the "l" several letters have been left out. In
> other words, it is a contraction. 
<snip>
> 
> Also note that I searched Google for "typo's" and found
> 325,000 instances, which admittedly pales by comparison to
> a search for 'typos', but it says I'm not only one. Also
> note that one of those instances was National Public Radio. 
> 
> Certainly, as my search shows, "typo's" is not common, but
> again the question at hand is not whether "'s" pluralizes
> anything, but whether "typo's" is a valid contraction for 
> a plural phrase that already ends in "s"?
<snip>

Sorry, Steve. Contractions are mostly used for verb phrases:
Is not = isn't
You are = you're
he is = he's

"Int'l" and similar contractions are rare.

So the only possible contraction that would be spelled "typo's" would
mean "typo is," As in, "My most frequent typo's 'herslef,'" an awkward
 and ambiguous way of saying, "My most frequent typo is 'herslef.'"

Words contracted in the way you're speaking of, say, "Dr." for
"Doctor" in a name, contain no apostrophe. (In American English,
they're followed by a period, but the Brits are abandoning the
paractice.) Shortened words, such as the British "maths" for
"mathematics," also contain no apostrophes.

As for 35,000 instances of "typo's," I'm afraid that statistic only
illustrates how prevalent the misuse of apostrophes has become.

Just for fun, I Googled "toliet" as a deliberate misspelling of
"toilet" and got--I kid you not--, 1,090,000 hits! And I got 177,000
for "Hermoine," which does not make the transposition of the "o" and
"i" in "Hermione" name correct, however common the misspelling may be.

Carol, who stand's--er, stands--by her position that "typo's" is not a
contraction but a misspelling