Q. Hey, has the Manual of Style tackled this conundrum yet? In Ira Gershwin’s lyric
I got plenty o’ nuttin’
and nuttin’s plenty for me
shouldn’t the second line require a double apostrophe (nuttin’’s)? Wouldn’t a single apostrophe create massive confusion the world over? I pass over the question of the idiomatic usage of nutting for nothing.
A. We can always count on our readers to flummox us now and then! But the lyric is creative enough; it’s probably best not to overdo the punctuation.