Dept. of Pet Peeves, Sports Journalism Edition

JL Wall     July 21st, 2009     
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by JL Wall

Dear ESPN (and others),

The plural of “run batted-in” is “runs batted-in” — not “run batted-ins.”  Similarly, the plural of the abbreviation “RBI” is, in fact, “RBI” — “RBIs” in all its ungrammatical anti-glory just makes me cringe.  In the name of DiMaggio’s hitting streak, please stop writing it that way.  As a bonus (or a bribe), I’ll give you a new joking nickname for the RBI: just like “RBI,” the singular and plural of “moose” are the same — so you can just combine it with the term “ribeye” and call it a moose-steak, or moose-meat!  Your clutch RBI-man can now be called a “natural-born moose hunter”!  Can you even begin to imagine the possibilities for puns in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Cleveland in April?  It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s gimmicky, it’s clever (and it channels Sarah Palin just vaguely enough to entice “real Virginians” without pissing anyone else off!).  Give it a thought; get back to me.

Love,

JL Wall

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     Filed under: sports

4 Responses to “Dept. of Pet Peeves, Sports Journalism Edition”

  1. Nathan P. Origer, on July 21st, 2009 at 9:55 am Said:

    Glad to know I’m not the only one whom this irks!

    And I love the moose idea.

  2. Dave Roth, on July 21st, 2009 at 10:02 am Said:

    I’m not sure why it follows from “runs batted in is the correct plural form” that “RBIs” should be taboo.

    It seems perfectly fine to have an acronym with a plural form that doesn’t reflect the plural form of the full phrase. Nobody I know finds “MPs” (members of parliament) to be particularly irritating.

  3. John Schwenkler, on July 21st, 2009 at 10:33 am Said:

    I’m kinda sorta with Dave Roth, and I like the comparison to “MPs” – I’d been searching for a similar example, and couldn’t come up with one. Anyone got any others?

  4. kenB, on July 21st, 2009 at 2:15 pm Said:

    I think the hard part is coming up with nominal acronyms where the noun is not the last word of the abbreviated phrase and which are apt to take a plural. Once you find one of those, you’ll typically see the acronym take the -s ending as if it were a word on its own, because English speakers naturally want to distinguish singular and plural (and naturally don’t want to put the plural marker within the acronym — “RsBI”, anyone?)

    So far all I’ve come up with is ROI (Return on Investment) — I’ve definitely heard people asking for comparisons of different ROIs.

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