Bull's Eye Business Writing Tips

What's wrong with the following sentence: "I was peaked by his hostile comments"? The answer: The word should be "piqued," which means "offended" or "provoked." "Peaked" means "ending in a peak or point" or "weak and wan."

I stumbled across your tips site while working on a writing section of a lab manual for a "writing in the major" neuroscience class. I was looking up some examples based on Truss' "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," a recommended book on your site, for when to use an apostrophe to make a plural of a word. I have the Gotham Books 2003 edition, and on page 45 it shows a couple of examples, but I'm trying not to "borrow" anyone else's work and so was trying to think of other sentences. A web search brought me to your Tip #407, where I am confused with respect to "dos" and "don'ts" - Your exercises only gives me the option to omit the contraction apostrophe in "don'ts" or not (nothing about "dos"), but Truss mentions this as a case for "do's and don't's" My understanding was that "dos" *could* (but doesn't have to) take an apostrophe ("do's") in order to avoid confusion with the Spanish number two, and that "don'ts" only uses the contraction apostrophe (where Truss uses both), but I'm trying to think of other times when the plural of a word (when the _word_, not its meaning, is what is being pluralized), would take an apostrophe. I realize Truss' book is British, so that may be part of the confusion, but I'm having a hard time finding a definitive answer for this in any guide to American or British English. Can you clarify American vs. British or why else I would/would not use an apostrophe in the plural of a word used for its own sake?

My Answer:

When words taken from other parts of speech are used as nouns, they are usually pluralized by the addition of "s or es": dos and don'ts. (the word "don't" already has an apostrophe because it is a contraction.)