1950s? 1950's? 50's? 50s?

Wow--that's very interesting! I'm very surprised the with apostrophes win! But glad to see it! Great info to have!

How about things like shoes? Not the dating, but the men's vs. mens & women's vs. womens? There I know for sure that at least on my listings, when I run a search for comparison, the "sans-apostrophe" titles are more abundant. Or is this just my experience?

 

Yep... WAY more listings as "womens" without the apostrophe.

Personally, I think the use of the apostrophe in dates (50's, 40's, etc) stems from people's confusion with the use of it in abbreviated dates such as saying something like "back in '51 I went to..."
But that's just my theory ;)

I'll use whatever gets searched more. But I still think ebay should condense the searches of them... just like they did with plurals.

 

Yes, 50s and 1950s are the proper terms but a lot of people don't know that. So when listing, if I have the room, I'll use both the proper term and variation. I keep this in mind when I search and use the * as a wildcard --- so I am searching both 50* and 1950*.

 

ok.....experiment now in progress. Took auction titles and converted to " 's " dates. Will note if hits increase and report back!