It's incorrect to pluralizing letters, numbers, acronyms, or decades with apostrophes in English. I will now pass the pedant stick to the next person in line.

[–] Beanie@programming.dev 49 points 2 months ago (15 children)

That's half-right. Upper-case letters aren't pluralised with apostrophes but lower-case letters are. (So the plural of 'R' is 'Rs' but the plural of 'r' is 'r's'.) With numbers (written as '123') it's optional - IIRC, it's more popular in Britain to pluralise with apostrophes and more popular in America to pluralise without. (And of course numbers written as words are never pluralised with apostrophes.) Acronyms are indeed not pluralised with apostrophes if they're written in all caps. I'm not sure what you mean by decades.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 months ago (7 children)

By decades they meant "the 1970s" or "the 60s"

I don't know if we can rely on British popularity, given y'all's prevalence of the "greengrocer's apostrophe."

[–] Beanie@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh right - that would be the same category as numbers then. (Looked it up out of curiosity: using apostrophes isn't incorrect, but it seems to be an older/less formal way of pluralising them.)

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)