Apostrophes

[LittleMan]

uhhh... I already knew that.

 

[Rob]

At a previous workplace of mine, there used to be a sign saying:

"Place teabags in the bin's provided"

I threw it away about six times and every single time they replaced it identically. The thing that gets me is that they typed it in MS Word. WHAT DO YOU THINK THE GREEEN SQUIGGLY LINE IS INDICATING YOU MORONS!

Is it just me or do signs really irritate you:

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[Rob]

If you want even more:

http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/examples_1.htm

 

[Corry]

Go find JoCose, and take a look in his sig for his grammar blog.. he has a whole bunch of signs like that in there.

 

[Corry]

Oh, and one thing you've gotta remember...I think a lot of people when they type in forums probably do the same thing as I do...they type as they would speak it, which makes it really easy to accidentally forget or misuse certain grammar rules that they normally would never mess up. For example...I have many times seen people type 'one' when they meant 'won' or visa versa....now they OBVIOUSLY know the difference, but they sound exactly the same, and their mind is in kindof a 'phonix' way of thinking: type it how it sounds. I often find myself messing up know and no. It's not like I don't know the difference though.

Although I will say when people talk like a 13 year old AOLer, (i.e. Hi! How r u 2day? rly?) yeah....that annoys me, and strikes me as being too lazy to type correctly. Or the whole no capitalization or punctuation thing...I can handle it if it's a short sentence, but if it's more than that, use puncuation and capitalization so I know what in the hell you are talking about.

Ok...my ramble is done. Sorry for hijacking.

 

[clarinetJWD]

Well, it's good someone finally said something, though not so good that they made the same mistake everyone seems too.

add 's to the singular form of the word (even if it ends in -s):

the owner's car

James's hat

Sorry, that is my biggest pet peeve. THe only time you can just add an apostrophe without an 's' is if the subject is plural. The boys' bathroom, etc...

It's weird that all of the examples used to demonstrate this point in the first post were plural, not singular... Everyone go read the Purdue page http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_apost.html, it agrees with the MLA standards of punctuation, which is the modern authority on the English language.

 

[Verbal]

There's another way I personally use apostrophes to give the plural of an acronym. Although it's grammatically incorrect, I think it makes things a little clearer. For example SLRs becomes SLR's or VFs becomes VF's.

Yeah...I always say PM's, otherwise it looks like PMS. lol

 

[terri]

Very good. Now assume the position for your punishment! :mrgreen:

I'm with you, Rob. Nothing irks me like seeing these signs out there that were designed, supposedly proofed, then actually MADE without anyone saying, "Hey! Who's the fool who put the apostrophe here?"

It's just not that hard. Pet peeve of mine, too!

 

[SteveEllis]

A Quote from that Language site...

p's and q's = a phrase indicating politeness, possibly from "mind your pleases and thankyous"?

I thought this was a term from the old printing press days where all the letters had to be put in manually, it was easy to mix the lower case P's and Q's together, hence the phrase.

I could be wrong though.

 

[Rob]

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_264.html

 

[ferny]

Very good. Now assume the position for your punishment! :mrgreen:

I'm with you, Rob.

Poor LaFoto.

 

[terri]

Poor LaFoto.

Oh please. Like you wouldn't want to be there with a camera. :roll:

 

[ferny]

Is that an invitation?

 

[terri]

Is that an invitation?

DOWN, SIMBAH!!!

 

[clarinetJWD]

Yeah, I don't know where they got that whole p's and q's thing... it's from the movable type printing press, where the letters were backwards, and p's and q's looked like the other letter... but the puctuation info is good