English ‘rules’ can be such a Ts

Dear Reader:

Please clip and sign the following petition and send it to your

representative in Washington.

I, the below-signed petitioner, hereby support a plan to create a

federal department called the Office of Cutting the Bull in Grammar

and Style Rules and Deciding Once and For All What Certain Rules

Shall Be. (I, the petitioner, feel that’s an appropriately unwieldy

name for a government office.) This office shall be created by

budgeting just $95,000 a year to be paid as salary to June

Casagrande, whose part-time job (five to 15 hours a month) shall be

to hold periodic summits of the nation’s foremost language

authorities. These authorities will convene via conference call (to

avoid the otherwise inevitable name-calling, hair-pulling and

eye-scratching) to decide by simple majority the nation’s official

positions on certain language issues. Their decisions shall be seen

as official but shall not be enforceable in any big, bad government

kind of way. It will still be legal to butcher the language and defy

the office’s rulings. The purpose of these rulings shall be to put an

end to the tyranny of all the conflicting, confusing and infuriating

“rules” that have been created by self-styled grammar gods. It will

also serve as the final word in stupid grammar-related arguments.

As an example of the necessity of such an office, I put forth the

following example -- just one of hundreds that prove that somebody

needs to put her foot down.

Some months back, the Los Angeles Times printed in a headline that

students are earning “A’s and Bs.” More recently, June Casagrande

wrote in the A Word, Please grammar column that she looked up

something in the dictionary “under the M’s.”

The latter inspired swift rebuke from a reader who pointed out

that the apostrophe suggests a possessive.

“Rules,” such as the one cited by the reader, foster confusion and

criticism in a way that must now, once and for all, be stopped.

Apostrophes, as the reader pointed out, are used primarily for

making possessives and contractions: John’s book. Mr. T’s attitude.

But if you wanted to make Mr. T plural, you’d say, “The hairstylist’s

customers looked like a bunch of Mr. Ts.” Right?

Well, that depends on which evil authority is calling the shots.

Some say not to use apostrophes when making letters plural. But

others disagree. Most notably, this includes the Associated Press,

which governs most newspapers. The AP Stylebook says to use

apostrophes for “plurals of single letters,” and gives the following

examples. “Mind your p’s and q’s. He learned the three R’s and

brought home a report card with four A’s and two B’s.”

Yet the Chicago Manual of Style, which governs book editing, says

that, “Capital letters used as words, abbreviations that contain no

interior periods, and numerals used as nouns” are made plural by

adding S with no apostrophe. Their examples include, “The three Rs”

-- a blatant taunt of the Associated Press people.

Just to make things fun, Chicago gives a contradictory rule for

lowercase letters: It’s “x’s and y’s,” they tell us.

Of course, none of this explains why the Los Angeles Times would

write “A’s and Bs.” No, here again we see somebody making up their

own rules -- in this case, the Los Angeles Times. Like most major

newspapers, The Times has its own stylebook of rules it made up for

itself. Its rule, which is mimicked by many, seems to be: Don’t use

an apostrophe to make a letter plural, “Bs,” except when one is

needed to avoid confusion. “A’s” without the apostrophe could be read

as “as.”

As if that weren’t maddening enough, the Associated Press holds

this rule for plurals of multiple-letter combinations: “Learn your

ABCs. I gave him five IOUs. Four VIPs were there.”

Therefore, I, a user of the English language, support paying June

Casagrande lots of money to spearhead the operation to correct this

mess. And, of course, I happily accept the tax increase necessary to

pay for it.

Sincerely,

Your Name Here

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].