When abbreviating the word "recommendations" as "reco's", is it proper to use the apostrophe to show that it's an abbreviation, or does it conflict with a possessive apostrophe?
apostrophe use – Using Apostrophe for Abbreviating ‘Recommendations’ as ‘Reco’s’
abbreviationsapostrophepossessives
Related Solutions
Professor David Crystal explains it in his book The Fight for English: How language pundits ate, shot, and left (Crystal 2006), pp. 134-135:
Its is just as possessive as cat's, but it doesn't have an apostrophe. Why not? Because the printers and grammarians [of the nineteenth century - Alex B.] never thought the matter through [emphasis mine - Alex B.]. They applied their rule to nouns and forgot about pronouns, thus creating an exception (along with the food is hers, ours, yours, theirs) without realizing it. And even if they had noticed, they wouldn't have done anything about it, for it's was already taken, as it were, as the abbreviation of it is.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in languages.
Charles Fries (Fries 1927) speculates that it could also be so because "their plural forms do not end in s" (cf. one - one's - ones or other - other's - others, ft. 7)
For an excellent summary of how the rules concerning apostrophe use developed, see
Sklar, E. (1976). The Possessive Apostrophe: The Development and Decline of a Crooked Mark. College English, 38(2), 175-183. doi:10.2307/376342
If you want to learn more about how the grammarians of the past arbitrarily imposed their confusing rules - and didn't stick to them - see pages 197-198 in Doctrine of correctness in English usage, 1700-1800 by S.A. Leonard (Leonard 1962); for instance, Joseph Priestly argued in The rudiments of English grammar, which was published in 1772, the following (pp. 86-87):
On the other hand, in the same book, on page 11, he lists all the possessive pronouns without an apostrophe and he treats its separately, as the genitive form:
Thirteen years later, J. Mennye in An English grammar ; being a compilation from the works of such grammarians as have acquired the approbation of the public [...] argued diametrically the opposite of the convention earlier proposed by Joseph Priestly.
But in 1823, T.O. Churchill says the following in A New Grammar of the English Language:
This is called the possessive case or the genitive case of a noun. (Possessive is the more common term, but it implies ownership; genitive is more general and implies a relationship.)
In Old English, there were many ways to put a noun into the genitive case, depending on count and gender. But after the 1500s, a noun could only be put into the genitive case with an -es ending. Eventually the e was dropped, leaving us with 's.
Sometime after, the plural genitive was reintroduced with the following convention: Form a plural genitive by adding just an apostrophe only if the normal plural noun ends in s; in all other cases, add -'s as normal. So beavers' and carpenters', but children's and people's. Sometimes you'll also see the convention applied to singular nouns ending with s (e.g., Jesus' ), but this is often discouraged.
Why my instead of I's? My is a possessive adjective and doesn't follow the normal rules.
Best Answer
The use of the apostrophe to denote an abbreviation (more accurately, to denote missing letters) is known as an "apologetic apostrophe". It is recommended by Eats, Shoots and Leaves that apologetic apostrophes be used only for "novel" abbreviations. They should not be used for abbreviations that have become common words in their own right (fridge, nuke, phone). The exceptional case is for those abbreviations more commonly known as "contractions"; "I've", "you'll", "don't", etc., where the use of the apostrophe became common along with the word.
So, short answer, it depends on your audience; those who have never seen the term before would probably understand it better with the apostrophe, while those who use the term in speech would get it faster without. The fact that it's audience-dependent would lead me to say that the abbreviated term is jargon and should be avoided when writing for a general audience. However, given that, the solution becomes simple; drop the apostrophe, because if you're using it at all, it's common to your audience.