possessives - Using apostrophe when abbreviating "recommendations" as "reco's"


When abbreviating the word "recommendations" as "reco's", is it proper to use the apostrophe to show that it's an abbreviation, or does it conflict with a possessive apostrophe?



Answer



The use of the apostrophe to denote an abbreviation (more accurately, to denote missing letters) is known as an "apologetic apostrophe". It is recommended by "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" that apologetic apostrophes be used only for "novel" abbreviations. They should not be used for abbreviations that have become common words in their own right (fridge, nuke, phone). The exceptional case is for those abbreviations more commonly known as "contractions"; "I've", "you'll", "don't", etc., where the use of the apostrophe became common along with the word.


So, short answer, it depends on your audience; those who have never seen the term before would probably understand it better with the apostrophe, while those who use the term in speech would get it faster without. The fact that it's audience-dependent would lead me to say that the abbreviated term is jargon and should be avoided when writing for a general audience. However, given that, the solution becomes simple; drop the apostrophe, because if you're using it at all, it's common to your audience.


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