Thursday, April 28, 2011

I Disagree with the New York Times

Today's New York Times has an interesting article about Medicaid in Florida. This article shows that punctuation rules are not always set in stone.


The headline appears to be an apostrophe catastrophe, but copy editors at the Times would disagree. The Times makes a conscious decision to include periods and apostrophes in plural initialisms. I think it looks awkward and would prefer HMOs. What do you think?

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9 comments:

  1. Left FieldApril 28, 2011 at 3:29 PM

    I agree with you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RickApril 28, 2011 at 7:11 PM

    Yes, I agree. H.M.O.'s looks way too confusing and awkward.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DaphneApril 28, 2011 at 9:09 PM

    I agree with you.

    I have seen the NYT do this before. And I disagreed with their usage then, too :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 29, 2011 at 8:29 PM

    I also agree with you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousMay 15, 2011 at 1:37 PM

    I'm with you, but I can see where the Time is coming from.

    "HMOs" looks fine, but "H.M.O.s" is kind of weird and they're obsessive about periods.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMay 26, 2011 at 10:36 AM

    I'm an appellate attorney who handles mostly capital murder cases (for the good side), so I write a lot. That said, I wholeheartedly agree with you about not using apostrophes to pluralize acronyms.

    ReplyDelete
  7. gfeMay 31, 2011 at 11:29 PM

    I agree with you. I also think the periods are unnecessary (although not catastrophic).

    ReplyDelete
  8. PRJune 27, 2011 at 2:23 PM

    I agree, though I'm never sure what to do in cases where the entire passage is in all capital letters. I also would like to see the periods be officially declared unnecessary.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Jay Philip WilliamsMay 24, 2013 at 8:17 PM

    Commas are used in other, similar cases, too (e.g., 1980's). Although it's common, I'm with all of you, here—it's wrong.

    ReplyDelete