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A paper I’m writing refers frequently to a group of anthropological hypotheses, and I would like to abbreviate “anthropological hypotheses.” However, because hypotheses is plural, I’m debating whether to use (AH) or (AHs).

I suspect that (AH) may be technically correct, but In my opinion, (AHs) is better because it reminds the reader that I’m talking about more than one hypothesis. I was therefore wondering what forum-members thought about this.

Thanks very much for your opinions

Skater
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  • AHs is the right choice, and why do you think AH is technically correct? There's a difference between ATM and ATMs. – VKBoy Dec 17 '20 at 14:16
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    Perhaps the best dictionary of initialisms/acronyms lists dozens of expansions of AH, but not this, even in the 'least rarely used' category. There are not a vast number of hits for the expansion “anthropological hypotheses” on Google. Usually, an initialism pluralises by the addition of a lower-case s, but there may be situations where this is not the case, the terminal s being 'coded for by the last letter of the abbreviation'. With little-used initialisms, local practice should be followed. This is arbitrary rather than a matter of standard English, so off-topic on ELU.... – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '20 at 14:30
  • For instance, 'President of the United States' is abbreviated POTUS not POTUSs. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '20 at 14:34
  • The use of AHs as the plural of AH is normal and correct. It does not matter if AH is well-known acronym or not; all that matters is that you define it in your prose on its first use there. – Anton Dec 17 '20 at 14:51
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    @EdwinAshworth: But in POTUS, the relevant noun to be pluralised is president, not state. And if there were several of them, they'd be POTUSs (or POTUSes or POTUS's or whatever). In OP's context, the abbreviation is AH = anthropological hypothesis - so to reference several such *hypotheses,* you'd use AHs (or AHes or AH's, according to taste). – FumbleFingers Dec 17 '20 at 15:04
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    Ugh. I vote against this kind of abbreviation. It does not make reading easier. You don't need to repeat "anthropological," since that is obviously the type of hypotheses (once described). I would simply refer to "the hypotheses" when needed, after defining your subject. If a name has been applied to sets of hypotheses, such as "the late-arrival hypotheses" or the "pre-Columbian hypotheses" and both need to be referenced, then I might use "LAH" and "PCH" to distinguish them, and avoid real wordiness. – user8356 Dec 17 '20 at 15:06
  • @FF An SOS not an SOSs or an SOS's. The initialism, like an acronym, has become lexicalised up to a point, with the final s incorporated. The crux of this question is (a) is AH an acceptable initialism here and (b) if so, is it a standardised abbreviation of “anthropological hypothesis”, “anthropological hypotheses”, or both? – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '20 at 15:16
  • An initialism whose expansion is already plural is NICT (New Information and Communication Technologies). Unusual, but shows lack of universal patterning. And more common that AH = anthropological hypothesis?/es? (AllAcronyms) – Edwin Ashworth Dec 17 '20 at 15:29
  • Wow! Thanks very much for the very informative discussion. It was more than I had hoped for. – Skater Dec 19 '20 at 11:01

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