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Punctuation

I'm having a brain freeze.

How do you punctuate the word doctors when an attorney says Dr.s Smith and Jones?

Thanks in Advance everybody!!

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Permalink Reply by Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber) on March 20, 2013 at 14:26

Drs. Smith and Jones.

and a bonus paste from a 2002 discussion:

>>Did you ever see any doctor's reports from Joe's doctors?

It's doctor's reports.

When you hear an ambiguous phrase such as "any doctors reports" or "the doctors reports," always treat the possessive element as singular unless the testimony or the context makes it clear that two or more doctors collaborated on each of the reports being cited or called into question.

Use plural doctors when more than one doctor shared [wrote] the same report: The doctors' report was written by Drs. Smith and Jones. Here, it's clear from the context that the two doctors produced only one report.

Use plural doctors and plural reports when the Drs. Smith and Jones collaboratively wrote two or more reports: The doctors' reports were written by Drs. Smith and Jones.

A doctor's report is just that: a doctor's report. If there is more than one doctor's report, each written by a different doctor, it's still "doctor's reports."

This really is the basic rule. As it says in ¶612b of The Gregg Reference Manual: when the first element of a compound is a possessive, simply pluralize the final element. This would cover all those situations above when the transcriber cannot be sure what the situation is. The note at the end of ¶612b says that you should not convert a singular possessive form into a plural unless the context clearly requires it. And this would apply to those special cases when the testimony makes it crystal-clear that two or more doctors collaborated on all the reports being cited.

Same as doctor's excuse. Did Joe receive any signed doctor's excuses from any of his doctors? We know that Joe's doctors did not sign the same excuse or excuses.