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Is there a way to pluralize a quotation? E.g.,

He was greeted with a chorus of “Hello”s.

or

Her daring earned “Ooh”s & “Ahh”s from around the room.

With actual dictionary words (“Hello” in the first example), simple plurals might do, without quotes: “He was greeted with a chorus of hellos.”

With ad hoc onomatopoeic words like “ooh” & “ahh”, though, can I pluralize them without confusing the reader? Is italicizing part of the word acceptable: “Her daring earned oohs & ahhs from around the room”?

J. C. Salomon
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  • ...in terms of actual usage for one of OP's specific cases, note that Google Books says it has 13900 instances of "oohs and ahhs", but only 366 of the apostrophised version. – FumbleFingers Jun 19 '12 at 17:04
  • @FumbleFingers, neither example has apostrophes. Before my edit, the entire examples were in quotes so the specific word were in single quotes – not apostrophes! – J. C. Salomon Jun 19 '12 at 17:15
  • Perhaps I should have voted "Too Localised" then. I don't know where you got the idea of enclosing onomatopoeic words in quotes (single or double) before pluralising, but in my experience no-one ever does this. – FumbleFingers Jun 19 '12 at 17:21
  • The people in the room are saying “Hello”, or “Ooh” & “Ahh”; hence the quotes. – J. C. Salomon Jun 19 '12 at 17:24
  • In the context of reported speech you enclose words in quotes because that's what was actually said. That's not the same as your context, where you're using the onomatopoeic words as "nouns". Which is fine, except that as I said, we don't put the pluralising s outside the closing quote - at the very least, it's always "oohs" and "ahhs". Rarely, as my link shows, people include an apostrophe when pluralising such words, but they would normally avoid the messy effect of combining such a style with double quote marks round the whole word. – FumbleFingers Jun 19 '12 at 17:41
  • That's part of my question: he greeted with hellos = many people saying “hello”—so it feels as if it should be “hello”s, unless a better way to indicate this is suggested. – J. C. Salomon Jun 19 '12 at 17:44
  • "I said hello to him" is a perfectly common thing to write without quote marks, as is "I know him {well enough} to say hello". Your usage has more in common with that than with reported speech (some of the greetings might actually have been "Hi", "Hey there!", etc.). Certainly the quote marks aren't appropriate when pluralising either the actual word or the act of greeting. – FumbleFingers Jun 19 '12 at 18:02

4 Answers4

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“Her daring earned oohs and ahhs from around the room” would be most correct. Adding an apostrophe would denote possession; e.g., "Her daring earned ooh's and ahh's from around the room." The ooh and aah would not be plural in that case but would be subjects of the sentence showing possession. The ooh's what? The aah's what? Also I would do away with the extra quote within the quote. There is no need to set off the oohs and aahs with internal quotes. Internal quotes within a quote would be used in the case of a character speaking and quoting someone; e.g., "I was there, I tell you. I heard John say,'Don't you dare come one step closer, or I will do it.' It was so frightening to hear him threaten us in that way!" I would also do away with the capitalization of the oohs and aahs. Capitalization is reserved for nouns (people, places, titles--for some examples).

Hannah
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  • Your recommendation makes sense, and your disagreement with the internal quotes is cogent, but you seem to have seen apostrophes in my question that aren’t there. – J. C. Salomon Jun 18 '12 at 01:57
  • I agree that apostrophe usage is probably not required here but some expressions use them to make the phrase easier to read. For example "do's and don'ts" as opposed to "dos and dont's" – Joe Fawcett Jun 18 '12 at 10:02
  • I’ve edited the question to make it clearer that those were quotation marks, not apostrophes. – J. C. Salomon Jun 19 '12 at 16:22
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I recognize this is an old question, but I ran across it while looking for the answer myself, and thought I'd offer up Chicago's thoughts on the matter.

Per CMS 17th ed, chapter 7, section 13:

Plural form for words in quotation marks. The plural of a word or phrase in quotation marks may be formed in the usual way (without an apostrophe). If the result is awkward, reword. Chicago discourages a plural ending following a closing quotation mark.

How many more “To be continueds" (not “To be continued”s) can we expect?
or, better,
How many more times can we expect to see “To be continued”?

So in the case of the original question, Chicago would expect

He was greeted with a chorus of “hellos.”

and

Her daring earned “oohs” and “ahhs” from around the room.

TrekkieTechie
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The form of “Her daring earned ‘Ooh’s & ‘Ahh’s from around the room” looks better to me than that of “Her daring earned oohs & ahhs from around the room”; but opinion aside, I don't know an authoritative answer – except, perhaps, the advice to reword to avoid plural forms. The example might become: “Her daring earned exclamations of "Ooh!" and "Ahh!" from around the room.”

Community
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James Waldby - jwpat7
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For plural forms of italicized or underlined words, phrases, abbreviations, and letters, the s or 's is almost always roman: "a row of x's," "7's sometimes look like 2's, "there are thee's and thou's in older literature," "too many New York Times." The apostrophe and s are not italicized or underlined. A title already in plural form may be left unchanged, e.g., two Chicago Tribunes. Foreign words in their plural form should be set entirely in italics, e.g., señores. The plural of a word or phrase in quotation marks may be formed by adding an apostrophe and an s, with the closing quotation marks following the s: How many more ok's can he use in a conversation? A plural ending should never follow closing quotation marks. A better option is to reword. -dictionary.com

Claire
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