[thechat] Possessive or not?

[Andy Warwick]

> At 10:51 PM 7/18/2002, John Handelaar wrote:
> >[1] The Two Madhus!  It's either a comedy act, or
> >they recorded 'Knights in White Satin' :-)
>
> That reminds me. I'm bugged whenever someone uses the possessive form
> where
> they actually mean plural. So they use "CD's" instead of "CDs", "PC's"
> instead of "PCs", "CPU's" instead of "CPUs".

My pet hate is misuse of the word 'decimate'.

<whine, moan, grumph>

The number of times I have seen it used to mean the complete destruction
of an area or group of objects or people, when it in fact means the
killing of *exactly* one tenth of a Roman legion as punishment. It's
usage has - somewhat understandably - been extended to include the
killing of a larger proportion of a group of people, but to use it when
referring to property is incorrect.

For more info see:

    <http://www.bartleby.com/61/35/D0073500.html>

</whine, moan, grumph>

Andy W