Don’t do do’s
Apostrophes are like knives: bloody dangerous in the wrong hands.
Now, as we know: apostrophes are used to denote possession or to denote missing letters. Never plurals. Never. Even when it (arguably) adds a touch of clarity.
A bugbear of mine is do’s and don’ts. It should be dos and don’ts.
Yes, dos looks like something computer programmers use, but do’s is just wrong. There is no missing letter and no possession - so just leave that poor apostrophe out of it.
And if you’re going to persist with do’s, then for the sake of being consistently stupid, you should write don’t’s.
Pluralising common words often leads to trouble. The following poem is from Woe is I and is rather wonderful. (And yes, noes is the plural of no.)
Words to the Whys
Ups and downs and ins and outs,
Forevers and nevers and whys.
Befores and afters, dos and don’ts,
Farewells and hellos and goodbyes.
Life is a string of perhapses,
A medley of whens and so whats.
We rise on our yeses and maybes,
Then fall on our noes and our buts.