When to Form a Plural with an Apostrophe

When to Form a Plural with an Apostrophe When to Form a Plural with an Apostrophe When to Form a Plural with an Apostrophe By Maeve Maddox This reader wants to know why we write 1980s and not 1980s. I understood that making text entities with non-letter characters into a plural form, you separate the s from the term with an apostrophe 1900s, Jones, Smiths, or Bang!s. Â  So, why no apostrophe with 1980s? A lot of writers share this readers understanding that non-letter characters are pluralized by adding apostrophe s. Alas. Alas, indeed. That pesky apostrophe raises a lot of blood pressure for writers of English. If I had my druthers, wed phase out altogether the use the apostrophe to form the possessive of nouns. What meaning would be lost if we wrote my mothers birthday, the cats tail or the cats tails? Teachers and editors could save their red ink for dealing with the apostrophe and plurals. NOTE: Ive received so many protests regarding these facetious remarks that I hereby withdraw them. We do need the apostrophe to form the possessive. Mea culpa, dear readers. I cant really answer the readers question. What I can do is lay out what the Chicago Manual of Style says about when to use an apostrophe and when not to. And it has a lot to say. Here are only some of the rules this style guide offers. Dont use an apostrophe to pluralize a proper name or other capitalized noun: Many Pakistanis have immigrated to the U.S. (not Pakistanis) Ill be occupied for the next three Thursdays. (not Thursdays) The Jeffersons live here. (not the Jeffersons) NOTE: The CMS suggests that if you want to pluralize an awkward name like Waters or Rogers, you may want to reword the sentence to avoid writing the Waterses or Rogerses. (or Maddoxes?) Dont use an apostrophe to pluralize a title: I have three Madame Bovarys and five Animal Farms. (Type the title in italics and the s in Roman face. When forming the plural of words and hyphenated phrases that arent nouns but are used as nouns sometimes you do and sometimes you dont: I want no ifs or buts. Here are the dos and donts of blogging. Ive written 25 thank-yous. BUT Im tired of all his maybes. DO NOT use an apostrophe to form the plural of capital letters used as words, abbreviations that contain no interior periods, and numerals used as nouns: the three Rs. the 1990s lengthy URLs NOTE: For the abbreviations p. (page), n. (note), and MS (manuscript), the plurals are pp., nn., and MSS And for you scientific types, special rules apply for the plural of SI symbols: No periods are used after any of the SI symbols for units, and the same symbols are used for both the singular and the plural. Most symbols are lowercased; exceptions are those that stand for units derived from proper names (A for ampere, etc.) and those that must be distinguished from similar lowercased forms. All units are lowercased in their spelled-out form except for degree Celsius (Â °C). For those of you who, like me, hadnt heard of SI symbols, youll find a list here. DO use the apostrophe to form the plural of an abbreviation that combines upper and lowercase letters or has interior periods: The department graduated five M.A.s and two Ph.D.s this year. NOTE: If you leave out the periods, you can write MAs but youd still have to write PhDs. DO use the apostrophe to form the plural of lowercase letters: Mind your ps and qs. DO NOT use the apostrophe to form the plural of capital letters: What the CMS actually says is Capital letters do not normally require an apostrophe in the plural. One could write a sentence like this without confusing a reader: You need to improve the formation of your Ts and Zs. But one might be tempted to reach for the apostrophes with a sentence like this: You need to improve the formation of your Ss, Is, and Us. And finallyDRUM ROLLour readers question about using an apostrophe with non-letter characters: DO NOT use an apostrophe to form the plural of a number: The 1920s were noted for excess. I bowled two 300s and two 238s. Source: Chicago Manual of Style, paragraphs 7.9, 7.12, 7,14, 7.15, 7.16, 7.65, 9.59. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:How to Format a UK Business LetterThe Writing ProcessUses of the Past Participle

Linearbandkeramik Culture - The First Farmers of Europe

Linearbandkeramik Culture - The First Farmers of Europe The Linearbandkeramik Culture (also called Bandkeramik or Linear Pottery Ceramic Culture or simply abbreviated LBK) is what German archaeologist F. Klopfleisch called the first true farming communities in central Europe, dated between about 5400 and 4900 BC. Thus, LBK is considered the first Neolithic culture in the European continent. The word Linearbandkeramik refers to the distinctive banded decoration found on pottery vessels on sites spread throughout central Europe, from south-western Ukraine and Moldova in the east to the Paris Basin in the west. In general, LBK pottery consists of fairly simple bowl forms, made of local clay tempered with organic material, and decorated with curved and rectilinear lines incised in bands. The LBK people are considered the importers of agricultural products and methods, moving the first domesticated animals and plants from the Near East and Central Asia into Europe. Lifestyles of the LBK The very earliest LBK sites have loads of pottery sherds with limited evidence of agriculture or stock-breeding. Later LBK sites are characterized by longhouses with rectangular plans, incised pottery, and a blade technology for chipped stone tools. The tools include raw material of high-quality flints including a distinctive chocolate flint from southern Poland, Rijkholt flint from the Netherlands and traded obsidian. Domesticated crops used by the LBK culture include emmer and einkorn wheat, crab apple, peas, lentils, flax, linseed, poppies,  and barley. Domestic animals include cattle, sheep and goats, and occasionally a pig or two. The LBK lived in small villages along streams or waterways characterized by large longhouses, buildings used for keeping livestock, sheltering people and providing workspace. The rectangular longhouses were between 7 and 45 meters long and between 5 and 7 meters wide. They were built of massive timber posts chinked with wattle and daub mortar. LBK cemeteries are found a short distance away from the villages, and, in general, are marked by single flexed burials accompanied by grave goods. However, mass burials are known at some sites, and some cemeteries are located within communities. Chronology of the LBK The earliest LBK sites are found in the Starcevo-Koros culture of the Hungarian plain, around 5700 BC. From there, the early LBK spreads separately east, north and west. The LBK reached the Rhine and Neckar valleys of Germany about 5500 BC. The people spread into Alsace and the Rhineland by 5300 BC. By the mid-5th millennium BC, La Hoguette Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and LBK immigrants shared the region and, eventually, only LBK was left. Linearbandkeramik and Violence There seems to be considerable evidence that relationships between the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe and the LBK migrants were not entirely peaceful. Evidence for violence exists at many LBK village sites. Massacres of whole villages and portions of villages appear to be in evidence at sites such as Talheim, Schletz-Asparn, Herxheim, and Vaihingen. Mutilated remains suggesting cannibalism have been noted at Eilsleben and Ober-Hogern. The westernmost area appears to have the most evidence for violence, with about one-third of the burials showing evidence of traumatic injuries. Further, there is a fairly high number of LBK villages that evidence some kind of fortification efforts: an enclosing wall, a variety of ditch forms, complex gates. Whether this resulted from direct competition between local hunter-gatherers and competing LBK groups is under investigation; this kind of evidence can only be partly helpful. However, the presence of violence on Neolithic sites in Europe is under some amount of debate. Some scholars have dismissed the notions of violence, arguing that the burials and the traumatic injuries are evidence of ritual behaviors​, not inter-group warfare. Some stable isotope studies have noted that some mass burials are of non-local people; some evidence of slavery has also been noted. Diffusion of Ideas or People? One of the central debates among scholars about the LBK is whether the people were migrant farmers from the Near East or local hunter-gatherers who adopted the new techniques. Agriculture, animal and plant domestication both, originated in the Near East and Anatolia. The earliest farmers were the Natufians and Pre-Pottery Neolithic groups. Were the LBK people direct descendants of the Natufians or were they others who were taught about the agriculture? Genetic studies suggest that the LBK were genetically separate from the Mesolithic people, arguing for a migration of the LBK people into Europe, at least originally. LBK Sites The earliest LBK sites are located in the modern Balkan states about 5700 BC. Over the next few centuries, the sites are found in Austria, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and eastern France. France: Berry-au-Bac, Merzbachtal, Cuiry-les-ChaudardesBelgium: Blicquy, VerlaineGermany: Meindling, Schwanfeld, Vaihingen, Talheim, Flomborn, Aiterhofen, Dillingen, HerxheimUkraine: Buh-DniestrianRussia: Rakushechnyi YarNetherlands: Swifterbant, Brandwijk-Kerkhof