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Allen Schaaf wrote:
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So I suggest that the plural possessive, Users', is the correct answer.
Now my question is that an apostrophe is used to indicate letters that been
left out in a contraction, like couldn't, right? Why don't we do that when
we use initialisms?
Look at this sentence fragment: "Most SMEs agree...." To me that looks
wrong. I think it should be: "Most SME's agree...." But that doesn't seem
right either as it looks like a singular possessive and that does not match
with "agree." And "Most SMEs' agree...." is clearly wrong because it is a
plural possessive, not an indication of a contraction as the apostrophe is
external to where the letters are left out.
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I have this discussion with one of our developers all the time. To me, in
the "acronym as noun" situation, the choice "SMEs" looks right because it is
plural and the "E" *represents* all of the letters that have been left out
of the word Expert. Not sure about those words that need an 'es' to make the
plural instead of just the 's'. I'd still be inclined to leave out the
apostrophe.
This may be a dumb thing to bring up, but what articles in front of acronyms
that begin with S, L, M, N and the like: A or AN? My take is, if we
pronounce the acronym as a whole word then it would be "a SME," while if we
pronounce each letter separately it would be "an S-M-E."
Gwen Fremonti
Sr. Technical Writer
Prime Factors, Inc.
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