Thursday, March 6, 2014

grammatical number - What is the correct way to pluralize an initialism in which the final word is not pluralized by adding the letter "s"?

In computer science we discuss an abstract machine called a "deterministic finite automaton". The standard initialism for this term is "DFA". This makes sense in the singular usage of the initialism.



However, the pluralization of the word "automaton" is "automata". One speaks of "an automaton" or "many automata". Consequently, it seems intuitive to form an initialism of the phrase "deterministic finite automata" as "DFA".



This does not seem correct, as "DFA" could be either plural or singular. On the other hand, "DFAs" also does not seem correct because it would seem to expand to "deterministic finite automatons", a phrase which no self-respecting computer scientist would ever utter.




This appears to be a duplicate of the question here
What is the plural of the abbreviation of "multiplicity automaton", "MA" or "MAs"?



But that question was never clearly resolved. What to do?

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