Which is correct? The British Broadcasting Company's (BBC's) policy ... The British Broadcasting Company's (BBC) policy ... The British Broadcasting Company (BBC)'s policy ...
1 Answer
British Broadcasting Company's (BBC's)
No, I have never seen anyone do something like this. It's confusing.
British Broadcasting Company (BBC)'s
No, again, I have never seen this used. Imagine if there was a line break between "Company" and "(BBC's)," that would also be confusing.
Therefore, "The British Broadcasting Company's (BBC) policy ..." is the only correct answer. Indeed, Google Ngram couldn't find any references to (BBC)'s and very few for (BBC's), and looking through the result for (BBC's) shows mostly spurious matches anyway.
Secondly, when I was a copy editor for my university paper, I always would have used "British Broadcasting Company's (BBC)."
However, if I was writing, I would have tried to recast the sentence to avoid such a problem anyway. Final thought, do you even need to expand BBC? Depending on your audience, it might be acceptable to use "BBC" on first reference (check your style guide), like NASA, FBI, or CIA is in the U.S.
answered Jun 2, 2016 at 19:31
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I did find examples of the ideas I gave but with different companies (not BBC). I must admit that I preferred recasting the sentence to avoid the problem! Thanks.– RMTCommented Jun 5, 2016 at 18:14
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But did you find examples in edited publications, books, newspapers, etc? Or just on crap like BuzzFeed? Don't forget to mark my answer as accepted if it helped you! Commented Jun 5, 2016 at 18:18
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I'm sorry, I don't remember where they were - probably on Linguee!– RMTCommented Jun 7, 2016 at 23:40