The antisocial behaviour order is a feature of modern British life and Tony Hatfield is uncertain as to whether it is an asbo or an ASBO, and whether or not its plural should have an apostrophe. He has every right to wonder what to put as pedants lurk in the linguistic undergrowth, ready to pounce on those who confuse dependent and dependant or practice and practise (although, as Brian Barder points out, such knowledge can have its uses). But, while the definition and spelling of such words may be a matter of objective information available in dictionaries (albeit often ignored), the use of capitalisation and apostrophes is not.
The easiest thing to do is to look in Fowler. The third edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, edited by Robert Burchfield, is an excellent updating of the classic; it states that the apostrophe with numbers and abbreviations is 'once commonly used … now best omitted'. This means that we can write of the 1960s rather than the 1960’s, but is asbos or ASBOS really an ideal solution? At first reading, especially of something relatively new, the words do not immediately stand out as the plural forms of acronyms; is asbos connected with asbestos in some way? Is it a part of the cosmos, or a familiar way of talking about the asbosphere? To my mind the simple solution to this problem is to place the acronym in upper case with plural <s> in lower case: one ASBO, two ASBOs. The use of an apostrophe in such plurals was explained in the past as representing the missing letters of the word, as in the verb contractions I’m, they’ll, etc. but this seems unnecessary in acronyms, where it is clear that letters are missing from all the words (George Bernard Shaw omitted apostrophes completely from his written work – and a good idea too in my view, but thats another question).
On the other hand, there are acronyms that have no plural form: the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (COED) has “Aids (also AIDS)” as the acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. In this case the use of the form with an initial capital, though unusual, is no problem although aids with no indication that it is an acronym could be confusing. Consistency in usage is desirable but perfect consistency is very hard indeed to attain even for the most professional publishers. Amateurs could well prefer to say with Ralph Waldo Emerson that ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’. Ultimately it is of no consequence whether one writes Asbos or asbo’s or ASBOs so long as the result is comprehensible, and the apostrophe in asbo’s can be justified (see above) whereas the one in the plural potato’s cannot (this is known as the greengrocer’s apostrophe). Punctuation, at this level anyway, is not a part of grammar any more than interior decoration and furnishing are a part of architecture. It is a matter of style and decoration, even of aesthetics and design, and thus partly of personal choice, but it has nothing to do with linguistics.
I have mentioned Fowler and the COED. These are standard works of reference that can give useful guidance to an unsure user. As an English language teacher and translator I am a professional, and I consult them frequently – partly because if I can answer a query about the way in which I use the language by saying that I have followed the style of Oxford University Press, that is usually the end of the matter. There is, however, room for individual preference: I write no-one (meaning nobody) rather than Oxford’s preferred no one, and I can justify this by saying that it distinguishes it from No one person could lift that weight alone and noone looks silly. Similarly, I use a hyphen in co-operate and co-ordinate for reasons of clarity; Oxford prefers the unhyphenated forms cooperate and coordinate but then has to accept the hyphen in co-opt and co-own.
Fowler is unique; there is no other non-specialist book, general or specific, that is in the same league for any aspect of usage of the English language. With dictionaries, though, it is a different matter. Certainly, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is one of the world’s great reference works in any language but it is not easily accessible even in its CD-ROM format, and on-line access is prohibitively (and scandalously) expensive. Desk-top dictionaries abound: Oxford, Chambers, Collins and others are all reliable, though they may differ in preference. English has no standard equivalent of the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, which is quoted with great authority to give and justify the meanings of words. Part of this difference lies in the fact that English dictionaries, and not only the OED, include archaic meanings whereas these are removed from the standard Spanish Dictionary. On the other hand, the Spanish language had no usage guide until last autumn, when the Spanish equivalent of Fowler (the Diccionario panhispánico de dudas) was published by the Language Academies from all Spanish-speaking countries, including the Philippines and the USA, unifying usage in the language worldwide.
Part of the increased availability of dictionaries is due to the use of computers. At one time, bringing out a new edition of a dictionary was a major publishing undertaking; now it is simply a matter of tweaking a data base and your Dictionary of New Words comes out through a simple filter.
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