Plural Of Acronyms

[Maggoty]

How would you rite the plural of an acronym? For example

Learning Support Assistant - LSA

LSAs or LSA's?

ta

x

[2sp_]

I would write LSAs.

[grasscarp]

LSA's would denote the possessive eg LSA's duties

[mrs_overall]

It depends on how you are using it.

I am going to see the LSAs (no apostrophe)

The LSA's books are over there (with apostrophe)

[dannyk13]

Lsas (lsa's would mean belonging to an LSA)

[Maggoty]

well that's what I thought but I am seeing more and more spelt using the apostrophe. Thought I was going mad :-)

Thank you

[grasscarp]

Yesterday I saw painted on the side of a van that they did "Fascia's" so people get it wrong all the time - and not just with acronyms. Another splendid one is "Potatoe's"

[2sp_]

Potatoe's is one of my favourites, grasscarp! (Or should that be favourite's?)

:-)

[gingejbee]

The example above ISN'T an acronym, btw. The letters have to spell another word eg Nato, Ernie.

[Maggoty]

Yes but not sure if the term initialism is widely known as an non-word acronym. Sorry - went for the easy option

x

[heathfield]

Ginge is right. If the letters don't spell out something that can be used as a word, then it isn't an acronym, it's an "initialism".

[heathfield]

Note to self...Simply must type more quickly!

[Quizmonster]

There is one interesting exception to the claim that apostrophes are never used to show plurals. That occurs in such cases as the plurals of individual letters... ‘Mind your p's and q's'...'Dot your i's and cross your t's'...'There are four i's in Mississippi' and so on. If a teacher wrote on a pupil's work, ‘Write your as more clearly', the child might think she meant his word ‘as' rather than his several individual letters ‘a'. So, ‘Write you're a's more clearly' is required.
The apostrophe is also omitted in the plurals of initialisms, as in CDs, MPs, QCs etc.