[panarky]

Why did you put an apostrophe in "fee's" but not in "rails"?

This isn't a grammar-nazi criticism because I frequently make similar mistakes with pluralization.

It strikes me that there must be some cognitive explanation for why some plurals seem to need an apostrophe when other plurals don't.

[johanneskanybal]

I'm fine with my English but non-native. Writing anything on the internet usually involves a googling of whatever expression I'm unsure of and if there's a reasonable amount of results that's an ok enough approximation for me. Try it with payment rails. No hate though I'm happy for friendly corrections.

[CRConrad]

For this, the basic rules of thumb are simple:

#1 Never apostrophe before plural-s.

#2 Always apostrophe before possessive-s.

Some weird possible exceptions noted in sibling comments (like apostrophe before plural-s on acronyms and single letters), but those aren't universal and therefore not mandatory. So if in (even the slightest) doubt, follow rules #1 and #2 and you'll be right far more often than wrong.

Oh yeah, one actually important and non-weird "exception": NO apostrophe "before possesive-s" on possessive pronouns like "his" or "theirs". I think this is because they're actually not ordinary nouns made possessive by adding apostrophe-s, but grammatically their own distinct words which happen to always contain an s at the end. So in that perspective, it's not even an exception; hence the quote marks.

And that ("it's") reminds me of rule

#3 Always apostrophe in contractions.

"Contractions" here means when a verb -- usually "is" or "has"; I don't know if (but don't think that) there are any others -- following a noun or a pronoun is reduced to its final 's' and added to the preceding word, as in e.g. "John's gone". You have to figure out whether the 's' stands for "is" or "has" from context: In "John's gone forever" it's "is", but in "John's gone and done it" it's "has". Usually it's pretty obvious, or doesn't really matter for understanding what's meant.

HTH!

[toast0]

Style rules used to suggest an apostrophe for initialized items such as C.D.'s for sale. Of course, modern style rules suggest CDs for sale (but don't tell the New York Times).

[leephillips]

The Times’ style guide would render more than one compact disc as C.D.s (no apostrophe, but with periods in intialisms).

Do you have a link to any authoritative style guide that suggested “C.D.’s”? The Times' guide (2015) demands apostrophes to pluralize single letters: “the word has two t’s”. I think that’s silly, just as their use of quotation marks rather than italics for book titles.

Here is a quote from the 2015 edition of the Style Guide:

“G.I. The colloquial term, derived from government issue, for American soldiers. The plural is G.I.s”

[TomSwirly]

The Chicago Manual of Style IIRC has this, also perhaps Strunk and White, and apparently the NY Times in 2010:

https://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/faqs-on-s...

[leephillips]

Hmm. Either the Time’s guide is inconsistent or they changed their rules between 2010 and 2015.

You’re correct about Chicago (you do RC); at least my 1969 copy.

My 1959 Strunk and White doesn’t seem to have anything about this, but it also doesn’t have an index, so maybe it’s in there somewhere.

[toast0]

I've probably gotten confused about the single letters and the C.D.s, thanks. (actually, looking at the other response's link, the Times may likely have changed their style guide)

But, then why an apostrophe for t's and not for fees? :D It rhymes, it should be punctuated the same is as good a rule as any!