Grammatical Number – Why Does Facebook Use ‘Like’s’ Instead of ‘Likes’? Understanding Internet Apostrophes

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I'm not a native English speaker, so I'm sorry if this is obvious but I can't find an explanation.

Why are "like"s usually referred to as like's on Facebook? (You can see many instances here.)

To use a "word as a word" I would put quotes (if convenient using the apostrophe character in electronic text) around the word and place the plural -s outside them, and it seems that is the norm except on Facebook, e.g. "like"s.

By the way it seems the same applies to the "Discours particle" use of like, as @simchona says in the comments.

Best Answer

At http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000135.htm is found the following:

Apostrophes with Italicized or Underlined Items:

Letters, numbers, symbols, and words used as themselves are italicized or underlined. ...

When these items are made plural, the plural is shown by adding apostrophe s to the underlined or italicized item. The apostrophe and s are not italicized or underlined. ...

I find the thee's and thou's in older writing hard to follow. (Words as words)

Lynne Truss also cites this usage in Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

(Unlike the first source above, Truss mentions the fact that there a few pure plurals allowed by some authorities to include apostrophes.)

Notice that these are talking about general, not Facebook-specific, English usages.

PS: My choice of like in the other thread is probably best regarded as arbitrary. Here is a parallel example: 'There are too many hamburger's in your essay.'

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