Great. I thought, after 35 years with this language, I would have finally would gotten to the end of inconsistent rules that favor what looks/sounds/feels right.
> I thought, after 35 years with this language, I would have finally would gotten to the end of inconsistent rules that favor what looks/sounds/feels right.
That's your mistake: You're looking for consistent rules, instead of looking for what communicates.
In the "Two i's" title, if you leave out the apostrophe, all you're left with is capitalization. So you can try:
Two is
Two Is
Two IS
All of those are clearly wrong; they beg the question [1], "Two is what?"
The problem is, "is" is already a word. You can't possibly use it as a plural of "I", because there's no way in the world that anyone could tell that that's what you meant.
So, you have to use the apostrophe here.
It's really fairly simple if you forget about looking for consistent rules.
Of course, this is not important, but with any luck it's interesting.
[1] This applies to "beg the question" too. Forget the rules, and instead communicate with people the way they do in the real world.
"i's" solves a communication problem, by resolving ambiguity.
redefining "beg the question" creates a communication problem, by introducing ambiguity.
Inventing new words like "blog" is progress. Confusing existing words is like solar flares flipping bits in RAM, causing unrecoverable damage to our shared system.
