Word Confusion: Dos / Do’s versus Dues

Posted June 15, 2021 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
1 July 2023

I know, dos? Sounds like two to me, from Spanish. It’s also part of a conflict I have on how to pluralize abbreviations, numbers, letters, and possessives.

I firmly believe in avoiding apostrophes to create a plural as too many writers do use an apostrophe to make all words plural, oy! Only . . . not using an ‘s for single letters or words looks weird.

So, the whole point of this post, dos versus dues, is both an exploration of pluralizing do and the meaning of dues. And because of these plurals, this post will ignore the verb definition for do but include abbreviations and nouns as well as ignoring the adjective and adverb for dues. Yeah, I’m including abbreviations for do as there are DO abbreviations. And yes, I do prefer simply adding an s at the end of the capitalized DO.

The Don’ts

I figured you might be curious about the don’ts and the only accepted spelling for a plural don’t is always by adding the s ONLY. Never, never, never use an ‘s.

You may also want to explore “Dew vs Do vs Due“, “Do versus Make“, “Done versus Dun“, “Does vs Doughs vs Doze“, and “Because Of versus Due To“.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

If you found this post on “Dos / Do’s versus Dues” interesting, consider subscribing to KD Did It, if you’d like to track this post for future updates.

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Dos / Do’s	Dues
Do’s and Don’ts of Wearing a Medical Mask Safely courtesy of the World Health Organization under the CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO license, via Wikimedia Commons.	Union Dues by slgckgc is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Flickr.
Part of Grammar:
Root word: do Abbreviation ³; Noun ¹, ² Plural for the noun: dos or do’s	Morpheme: due Plural noun: dues
Abbreviation: Defense order ³ Double occupancy [All caps] Doctor of optometry [All caps] Doctor of osteopathic medicine [All caps] Doctor of osteopathy Noun: [Informal] Short for hairdo ¹ Also ‘do [Chiefly British; informal] A party or other social event [British; archaic or informal] A swindle or hoax [Music; in solmization] First and eighth note of a major scale ² The note C in the fixed-do system	Noun: [Always plural; dues] An obligatory payment Fee
Examples:
Abbreviation: The DoD put out a number of DOs. This hotel only has DOs. DOs are the first level of doctor to having your eyes examined. Other types of DOs are doctors who are concerned with approaching their patients and their ills emphasizing the whole-person approach. Noun: Have you seen the new dos those ladies are wearing? There are a number of dos and don’ts that must be observed. There are several dos going on this weekend. Which ones are you coming to? There were some huge do’s at the time, and the cops could only close on one of them. The first and last tonic note of a major scale are the dos. “The tonic sol-fa method popularized the seven syllables commonly used in English-speaking countries: do” (Solfège).	Noun: She’s paid her club dues for this year. He had paid union dues for years. She’s paid her dues in full. He made a mistake and paid his dues. Club members have to pay $20,000 in dues annually. The law guarantees that no worker has to pay union dues to get or keep a job.
History of the Word:
From the Old English dōn, of Germanic origin. Related to the Dutch doen and the German tun from an Indo-European root shared by the Greek tithēmi meaning I place and the Latin facere meaning make, do. Mid-18th century from the Italian do, an arbitrarily chosen syllable replacing ut, taken from a Latin hymn. Unknown.	From Middle English in the sense of payable and is itself from the Old French deu meaning owed, which is based on the Latin debitus meaning owed from debere meaning owe.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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