Blue Jays

[gueman]

I was just playing around with a blue J logo, in the spirit of the A's. It was kinda plain so I decided to add the maple leaf and I noticed the T shape at the bottom.

Bam!

Simple I know. But what do you all think?

[meangreen]

I liked your Raptors stuff more. The current Blue Jays stuff is better and that is not good...

[gueman]

?? Never did any Raptors stuff. basketball is not my thing.

[ZBoyer]

No apostrophe. The Blue Jays own nothing; as there are more than one, there is just an "s."

[gueman]

No apostrophe. The Blue Jays own nothing; as there are more than one, there is just an "s."

Well it must be wrong here too...

http://www.sportslogos.net/logo.php?lo=1263

[Stampman]

A's is correct.

The apostrophe does not denote ownership, but a contraction of "Athletics"

So A's is correct, but Athletic's would be incorrect.

This punctuation note brought to you by the guy who use to overuse ellipsis...

[The_Admiral]

I guess A's works there, and by the same token B's and C's for Bruins and Celtics, because it's a contraction. Athletics. It's silly to go from Jays to J's though. It's like when Homer Simpson discovers his middle name.

[gueman]

I guess A's works there, and by the same token B's and C's for Bruins and Celtics, because it's a contraction. Athletics. It's silly to go from Jays to J's though. It's like when Homer Simpson discovers his middle name.

Well the idea was for a "blue" J. Not the bird but just a blue J. So you are not looking a "J's" you are looking at "Blue J's. Well maybe I'm the only one who gets it. And I guess like a joke if you have to explain it...

[Shane Does Art]

I was just playing around with a blue J logo, in the spirit of the A's. It was kinda plain so I decided to add the maple leaf and I noticed the T shape at the bottom.

Bam!

Simple I know. But what do you all think?

I once had a Toronto Maple Leafs concept with th T at the bottom too.

All in All I think you should change the J around.

[The_Admiral]

It looks like an umbrella.

[Epiphanic]

I'm not feeling this one, man. Clever idea making Toronto the "Blue J's" but I think they should stick with the bird, similar to what they had before their current uniforms. (Their current look is horrid.) As the logo itself, the maple leaf is just to big. It overpowers the "J." Good attempt, but I just don't see this one.

[OMMF]

A's is correct.

The apostrophe does not denote ownership, but a contraction of "Athletics"

So A's is correct, but Athletic's would be incorrect.

This punctuation note brought to you by the guy who use to overuse ellipsis...

You and everyone else here. Not naming names but...

[BallWonk]

No apostrophe. The Blue Jays own nothing; as there are more than one, there is just an "s."

Well it must be wrong here too...

http://www.sportslogos.net/logo.php?lo=1263

The rule that would be applied by most publishers and periodicals is that you do not use an apostrophe to create a plural, unless not doing so would cause obvious confusion. So you mind your Ps and Qs, but as the word "as" is spelled with the letters A and S in sequence, calling the team the Oakland As, or putting the name As on the cap, would be confusing. Thus the Athletics earn an exception to the rule, and it's OK to make the plural of A A's. It has nothing to do with contraction or not; when you make something plural you treat the thing you're making plural as though it is the word entire. A's is not a contraction of Athletics like can't is a contraction of cannot; A's is the plural of A like Ks is the plural of strikeout.

But since there is no chance of confusing Js for anything other than the plural of J, it ought not have the apostrophe. Then again, because of the precedent of the A's, it's hard to imagine any other team adopting a similar construction without the apostrophe, no matter how illiterate it looks.

This concept is not working for me at all, and I think it's mainly because of the line across the bottom of the leaf. It looks like is says TJ's, which come to think of it it probably is supposed to say, but it just looks amateurish to me. And off-balance. Fellow Canadian Pamela Anderson if not this top-heavy. Perhaps is this had either a T or a Js on the maple leaf. Simpler would be better.

[The_Admiral]

It has nothing to do with contraction or not; when you make something plural you treat the thing you're making plural as though it is the word entire. A's is not a contraction of Athletics like can't is a contraction of cannot; A's is the plural of A like Ks is the plural of strikeout.

Are you sure about this? A's is a shorter way of saying "Athletics," isn't it? The apostrophe represents the "thletic" that has been omitted as it would represent "no" in "can't."

[MrAsterisk]

This site, Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) says that no apostrophe is necessarry for the plural of any capital letter, but admits to there being an individual preference in many cases.

The National Punctuation Day website cites the previous site in agreement, and then proceeds to cite the Associated Press Stylebook which presents a contradictory rule.

The Capital Community College Foundation sponsors this grammar site which uses copious examples to, in essence, agree with Purdue's OWL.

The Emory Writing Center presents, at first, a quite totalitarian view on the use of the apostrophe in plurals of numbers, letters, and symbols, and then eases up with some exceptions.

On its five-point list of the apostrophe's three uses, Palomar College says to always use it for the plurals of numbers and letters.

That's about all the summarizing gas I've got left in me. Enjoy.

ADDED: If you consider A's as a contraction, then surely the thletic is missing in any singular form. Hence, Nick Swisher is an Oakland A'.

[gueman]

I agree with most of the comments. Grammarians can get into the p*****g contest over the 's. But we have had hats with M's and O's on them in the last 20 years.

Here is a modification. Nice, plain, and Canadian.

[VitaminD]

No apostrophe. The Blue Jays own nothing; as there are more than one, there is just an "s."

Well it must be wrong here too...

http://www.sportslogos.net/logo.php?lo=1263

The rule that would be applied by most publishers and periodicals is that you do not use an apostrophe to create a plural, unless not doing so would cause obvious confusion. So you mind your Ps and Qs, but as the word "as" is spelled with the letters A and S in sequence, calling the team the Oakland As, or putting the name As on the cap, would be confusing. Thus the Athletics earn an exception to the rule, and it's OK to make the plural of A A's. It has nothing to do with contraction or not; when you make something plural you treat the thing you're making plural as though it is the word entire. A's is not a contraction of Athletics like can't is a contraction of cannot; A's is the plural of A like Ks is the plural of strikeout.

Can't agree with you on this one, BW.

If someone asked you to write out your grades from a recent report card, you'd write "4 As and 2 Bs". The plural of "A" is "As". No apostrophe, just like the decade between 1970 and 1979 (or 1971 and 1980, if you adhere to stricter conventions) is the 1970s. The short form of "1970s" is "'70s", where the apostrophe represents the missing digits.

In the case of the Oakland ballclub, the original name "Athletics" was shortened to "A's", where the missing letters are represented by the apostrophe. Other teams have followed suit (Mariners = M's, Orioles = O's) where there'd be no confusion over the team name representing an actual word (unless you're a Latin scholar or doctor, where os may mean something to you).

The simple thing to do for the A's would be to just take the "'s" off the caps and go back to what they wore in Philadelphia: the Old English "A", by itself.

That said, I'm lukewarm on the "J's" concept. IMO, it comes off more like a neon sign for a bar. Maybe it's because there's so much white in the logo and a white background. But there's not much to it, and nothing that ties it to baseball very well. It's better than the first version, but I'm not buying just yet.

[The_Admiral]

Like I said, the problem I have with the J's thing is that the word Jay sounds exactly like the letter J. With Athletics, Mariners, and Orioles, you're at least contracting something. Going from Jays to J's, which sound exactly the same, is patently ridiculous.

[BallWonk]

The rule that would be applied by most publishers and periodicals is that you do not use an apostrophe to create a plural, unless not doing so would cause obvious confusion. So you mind your Ps and Qs, but as the word "as" is spelled with the letters A and S in sequence, calling the team the Oakland As, or putting the name As on the cap, would be confusing. Thus the Athletics earn an exception to the rule, and it's OK to make the plural of A A's. It has nothing to do with contraction or not; when you make something plural you treat the thing you're making plural as though it is the word entire. A's is not a contraction of Athletics like can't is a contraction of cannot; A's is the plural of A like Ks is the plural of strikeout.

Can't agree with you on this one, BW.

If someone asked you to write out your grades from a recent report card, you'd write "4 As and 2 Bs". The plural of "A" is "As". No apostrophe, just like the decade between 1970 and 1979 (or 1971 and 1980, if you adhere to stricter conventions) is the 1970s. The short form of "1970s" is "'70s", where the apostrophe represents the missing digits.

In the case of the Oakland ballclub, the original name "Athletics" was shortened to "A's", where the missing letters are represented by the apostrophe. Other teams have followed suit (Mariners = M's, Orioles = O's) where there'd be no confusion over the team name representing an actual word (unless you're a Latin scholar or doctor, where os may mean something to you).

The simple thing to do for the A's would be to just take the "'s" off the caps and go back to what they wore in Philadelphia: the Old English "A", by itself.

That said, I'm lukewarm on the "J's" concept. IMO, it comes off more like a neon sign for a bar. Maybe it's because there's so much white in the logo and a white background. But there's not much to it, and nothing that ties it to baseball very well. It's better than the first version, but I'm not buying just yet.

A few quick points for anyone considering using initialisms in uniform designs:

1. There is much disagreement between authorities on this specific point. And by "authorities," I mean publication style guides, not the opinion of each mook who thinks he oughta be an English teacher.

2. But there is one element on which you will find no disagreement between serious people: A's is not a contraction of Athletics. It is a pluralization of A. If it is true that A's is a contraction of Athletics and not a pluralization of A, then it would also be true that grammar requires us to write about the N'A'T'O' alliance and the N'A'S'A' space shuttle. We would further be required to talk about the Cav's, the Yank's, and the Nat's. Anyone who does not already use apostrophes in those circumstances does not actually believe his own argument about the A's being a contraction. And anyone who does already use apostrophes like that -- Yank's -- is regarded, correctly, by all who know him as a functional illiterate.

3. Just because the Mariners have used an apostrophe when calling themselves the M's doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. It just means it's something somebody did. (It might actually be the right thing to do, but it's not the doing of it that makes it right. Otherwise we'd have to say that it's proper English to write "Nothing compares 2 U" because Prince did it once.)

4. Contrary to my own assumption, the Chicago Manual of Style, the most common stylebook used in the publishing fields, actually has the firm rule that lowercase letters are made plural with an apostrophe, thus mind your p's and q's, but uppercase letters are made plural without an apostrophe, thus the teacher passes out As and Bs. Not what I thought at all!

5. Ultimately, the point of grammar is clarity. The best rule is that punctuation should be used only when necessary for the sake of clarity. Simple is best. The simple rule in English is that you make words, or anything acting as a word, plural by adding an s without an apostrophe. Thus As, Ms, and Os. But it is also true that there is at least a risk that writing As without an apostrophe will be unclear. The Oakland "as"? So you can make a reasonable case that with the apostrophe you prevent more confusion with the word "as" than you create by rendering a plural in possessive form. You really can't make that case for most teams, though. M's, maybe, on account of the honorific "Ms." O's? Not so much. And inserting apostrophes where they're not strictly needed does violate the most fundamental rule of grammar, which is to use punctuation only to improve clarity. It would be like adding commas, to the middle of sentences, just to indicate where you want people to pause. Like that sentence just there: I can justify the commas on solid grammatical grounds. But that would be silly justification; the sentence is perfectly clear without the commas, so all they really do is clutter up the screen. So if you really think that a cap that reads Os or As or Ms or whatever will actually cause people to be confused about what the cap is saying, then you should add the apostrophe and to heck with what any rulebook says. But if you don't believe that, then you shouldn't.

6. Yes, yes, yes, the A's should take off the apostrophe and the s and return to their glorious roots! Couldn't agree more. And your critique of the new Jays logo anticipates my own thoughts exactly.

[The_Admiral]

If it is true that A's is a contraction of Athletics and not a pluralization of A, then it would also be true that grammar requires us to write about the N'A'T'O' alliance and the N'A'S'A' space shuttle.

No, because NATO is an abbreviation and an acronym, not a contraction. Completely different can of worms.

Can we just table this and all agree that the J's thing is really dopey?