Is it ever right to use an apostrophe for years and for the plural of acronyms?

Question

eg 1990's

MBA's

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

Technically it IS correct, despite what people say above. It's a little-known 'extra' to the apostrophe rules- apostrophes are for possessions and for the pluralisation of abbreviations/acronyms/abbreviations.

So DVD's IS officially correct, even though many people don't like it.

90's is pretty common, but some people say you should use an apostrophe for 90's but not for 1990s.

Answer 3

No, if you mean plurals for years as well (as in your example).

In English, to form a regular plural, we add an "s".

That's it. There's no missing letter, so no apostrophe is needed.

Answer 4

No, it isn't correct to use an apostrophe here.  The apostrophe either means a possession (John's bicycle) or that something is missing (Aren't you coming?).  

If you are meaning the decade as a whole you would use 1990s or more than one MBA it should be MBAs.

Answer 5

You use an apostrophe in years and acronyms to show relationship:

1990's worst game ever was...

The MBA's former statement indicated that...

It is different from

The 1990s were a time of ultra-grungoid indifference.

Or

There was once one MBA. Now, there are a million MBAs

Answer 6

Ask yourself if adding an apostrophe in these cases is likely to increase the reader's ability to recognise the plural.  It doesn't does it?

Who would think that 1990s or DVDs are anything other than plurals?

Adding the apostrophe only obfuscates meaning so that 1990's or DVD's would be the possessive (strictly genitive) form if written by a literate writer but could be either if the writer is punctuationally challenged!

Why anyone should wish to defend the insertion of an apostrophe as a legitimate method of demonstrating a plural will ever remain to me a mystery.  It is just bad, lazy, illiterate nonsense

Answer 7

It can be right, if you are saying things like "The 1990's style'. For the second one, the same thing applies. If it's something it owns, then yes.

Answer 8

Those who say that there is "definitely no apostrophe" in date years, such as 1990's, are definitely wrong. Likewise, those who say that an apostrophe is wrong in the plural of abbreviations, such as MBA's, are also wrong.

The rules about the use of apostrophes to signal a plural rather than a possessive may seem complex, but for the purpose of the current question, can be reduced to saying that an apostrophe is used to signal a plural for a word that does not otherwise have a "natural" English plural. Therefore, in strictly correct terms, an apostrophe is inserted in year dates, abbreviations, foreign words that would be rendered in italics, and certain English words.

As always, examples are the best illustrations of the rules.  

The plural of dog is dogs, because dog is a word with a "natural" English plural. Therefore, we can say "It's raining cats and dogs".  But "if" and "but" are English words with no natural plurals, hence we would say something like "no if's or but's, do your homework!" That is, an apostrophe is used to signal the plural.  Likewise, individual letters of the alphabet have no natural plural, so we would say something like "How many a's are there in supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?"

Foreign words follow the same convention, particularly where the word or words would be rendered by a printer in italics, to show the foreign origin. Thus "lingua franca's". This convention however is not usually applied to foreign words that have become so integrated into English that they are treated as native words.

As will readily now be evident, abbreviations and year numbers likewise follow this convention.

That said, the convention for years and abbreviations is falling out of use, and 1990s and MBAs are increasingly seen in contexts where it is not ignorance of the convention that has resulted in dropping the apostrophe, but a conscious editorial decision.

However, the original question asked if "it is ever right" to use the apostrophe to signal plurals in years and abbreviations, and the answer is decidedly yes.

Incidentally, the custom in the US, which tends to be more rigorously correct in these matters than British English (surprisingly to many), is to retain the apostrophe in these special plurals.

Answer 9

It is never right to use an apostrophe for plurals. For example, the plural of potato and radio is not potato's and radio's. Likewise the plural of 1990 and MBA is not 1990's and MBA's.

Maybe one day, if enough people use these apostrophes incorrectly, their usage will become accepted as correct English.

Language evolves according to how people use it but for the time being, the use of apostrophes for plurals of years and acronyms is grammatically incorrect.

Answer 10

No. Unless it's possessive, there is only one exception to this rule: if there is only one letter, then the apostrophe is needed (such as "mind your p's and q's").

Some examples:

1980s

CDs

DVDs

Answer 11

It is for 1990's if you are describing something within that bracket but i tend not to for pluralisation of Acronyms.

Answer 12

No, although it's commonly done.

It's possible to invent a sentence with <year><apostrophe><s>, for example, "1990's warmest month was August", but using it to refer to the decade of the 1990s (which I think is really what you are asking), then there's defiitely no apostrophe.

The only time you could justify using an apostrophe in the plural of an acronym would be to avoid confusion. If, by simply adding an 's' to an acronym, the result is a misleading word in its own right (and I can't think of an example right now - I'll add it in if I think of one), then you could justify using an apostrophe.

But on the whole, the answer to your question is an emphatic 'no'.

Answer 13

NO