Comments on: The Word is Photos NOT Photo’s

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:51:11 +0000

The people that get the most angry are usually the ones that are wrong!

There’s plenty of posts here explaining it correctly; true to English it would be photo’s (contraction), but if you allow photo to be a word in its own right, which perhaps we should, then photos is correct (and infact in this case photo’s does then become incorrect).

as both are correct you should probably all calm down!

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:07:52 +0000

No, you morons. Photos is correct. Photo’s is not correct. “Photos” is a real word now; it doesn’t matter that it’s a contraction of the word photographs, because in this case, it isn’t. As someone above mentioned, phone is a contraction of the word telephone, TECHNICALLY.

By: John

John — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:32:21 +0000

Phil, you’ve damaged your credibility by using the wrong form of “it’s”.

By: Just me

Just me — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:12:40 +0000

Are we talking about the word ‘photographs’ the plural form of photograph? If so then the correct form has to be photo’s because, as you correctly point out, it’s either the possessive form or a contraction and clearly in this case photo’s is a contraction of photographs.

It is not ‘photos’ because that would be a pluralisation of the word photo and not photograph.

It is becomes it’s, photographs becomes photo’s, both contractions. The apostrophe marks the missing letters. I fail to see the issue.

By: georgia

georgia — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:12:03 +0000

I’ve wondered about this for a while, and I’m still undecided. The way I see it, there are two options:
1) “Photos” – no apostrophe because it is simply the plural of ‘photo’.
2) “Photo’s” – an apostrophe because it is an abbreviation of ‘photographs’.
What are your thoughts? Perhaps something to think about.

By: Nikki

Nikki — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 02:50:25 +0000

Okay – the word “Photo” is in the Oxford English Dictionary as a proper word. The policy is that a new word is entered after it has been in common usage for ten years. Therefore the contraction is now more or less inadmissible. The Plural is “Photos” or “Photographs” depending on how you formal you wish to be. The listing in the OED is as follows, (note the plural)
Photo
Pronunciation:/ˈfəʊtəʊ/
noun (plural photos)
a photograph.
informal a photo finish.
verb (photoes, photoing, photoed)
[with object] informal
take a photograph of.
I think that takes care of it.

By: Andy_P

Andy_P — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:12:28 +0000

Quote from one of the other comments:

Thank you! I don’t know why it is so hard for people to understand the contraction/possessive rule. Thank you for showing everyone!

But is this a simple case? “Photo” *is* a contraction of “photograph”. So it could be argued thatthe apostrophe in “photo’s” is there to show the contraction and not a mistaken possessive at all/

By: Christopher Lacey

Christopher Lacey — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:14:30 +0000

But surely the whole point is that photo IS a contraction, of photographs, so the apostrophe is used to illustrate that there are missing letters.

Although I do realise that the apostrophe here has fallen out of usage – just as people do not write ‘papers or ‘phone, although technically grammatically they ought to.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:13:15 +0000

I tend to agree with Phil. Though I would probably use Photos but it wouldn’t drive me crazy because it is a contraction of the word photographs.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:08:04 +0000

But is Photo’s not a contraction of photographs?