Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Greengrocer's Apostrophe

Who is tired of it?

Just that.

The what?

I called it the erroneous pluralizing apostrophe until I learned there was already an established name for it.

You and your’s and your damn oranges’s and apple’s.

Their more than one?

This opens the door for consideration of those rocks that people love to place in front of their homes with all sorts of plural and possessive errors on them.

The Jones = one person whose last name is Jones.
The Jones' = multiple persons whose last name is Jone claim ownership.
The Jone's = one person whose last name is Jone claims ownership.

Colourful for sure.

Just a normal assortment of vegetable's.

The apostrophe catastrophe.

Pluralizing with an apostrophe is just wrong. This being English, however, there are exceptions. One is with single digits; i.e, my phone number has two 8's.

This being the Campfire, these little lessons will have no effect.

Grey area for sure.

Guilty's?

Thankfully so.

Like Gray’s Anatomy gray?

*Greengrocers'

A well travelled example to be sure.

We donut halfve one heer in Iawo

While we're on it - what about the Oxford comma?

Green? Or Green’s?

And what’s behind the damn door?

Normally I ask WTF is (fill in the blank)... but my googler couldn't dig up anything on my Commodore.

My biggest concern is with the Oxford comma and failure to use it. So there.

*Comondroar5'

It, the greengrocer's apostrophe, doesn't bother me quite as much as those who post here without knowing when, or how, to use the return key to make a proper paragraph.

Some of those rate a triple Sheesh even.

I have bigger fish to fry.

I'm commatized by this thread. I may need to go on instagram to seek solace.

Making up gibberish words under the guise of the Portmanteau. Can’t stand it.

That's some kind of piece of furniture, no???

Its an existential threat.

that or maybe some kind of luggage for women?

Not plural - the one I always have to think about is it's or its. One is possessive, one is a contraction. One of them breaks the normal rules of apostrophes. They aren't interchangeable.

It’s a comedython!

Whaaa?
I like the asparagu’s and avocado’s; haven’t tried an apostrophe’s.

Must not be in season’s. (Note Return’s key action for Geno’s)

All I know is it sounds Frenchy,

and we all know we don't like the French around here.

Are the French Jews?

They’re mostly mutts. Been conquered and bred by many. Magyars, Romans, Vikings, Germans, Muslims.

C’est la vie

Year round cabin fever?

You seem commatized. We should get some lawyers for a class action lawsuit.

Ah, mais oui!

But, they love to maintain their "Frenchness"

Pluralizing single digits has been out of favor for some time - your phone number should have two 8s.

I'm glad for that, JOG. All my style manuals (I count 14 of them here on my shelf) show the old way. They - and I - are old as well.

The Oxford comma, otherwise known as the serial comma, is for strings of objects. Example: My sandwich is peanut butter, jelly, and banana. Those who would leave out the comma after jelly would imply that the two were somehow combined.

The classic is the marvelous book title "Eats, shoots & leaves" Which is a grammar book that's delightful and funny to read. The title is about pandas, who are thus said to eat before they shoot something and depart. It's by Lynne Truss. Commas, apostrophes, and semi-colons become fun.

This thread is so boring I'm in danger of becoming commatose!

It seems to me that the conventions vary from field to field as well. Your background in aviation could promote 8's, and mine in chemistry could promote 8s.

I agree about the Oxford comma being necessary. Jack, Jill, Dick, and Jane is a different story than Jack, Jill, Dick and Jane.

Hah, and I hear I thought those commas were Catholic nun commas.

We'd get red marks on our papers if we didn't use them properly. Too many red marks and one was likely to get a ruler or a pointer broken over one's knuckles.

It's almost like correct mathematical notation.

I was educated by nuns, brothers, and priests - in that order (pun intended) as well. Religion aside, you LEARNED stuff.

I was taught to place a comma before the “and” preceding the last item of a series. My adult daughter and son told me several years ago that English teachers were moving away from that.

I probably use it about 50% of the time so over time I’m half right. 😁

Lot's of stuff crap that is acceptable in common speech has also become acceptable in "writing and journalism".

"Since" and "because" are becoming synonymous. One is an expression relating to time passed and the other is an expression of "the result of". But, it's OK (okay?) to use them interchangeably now it seems.

Wasps build nests in posts!

I'm enjoying this conversation. Interesting.

Good one hotrod.

Thanks.
I really support the Oxford comma because it makes things clearer

For mangled English then and than bring mixed up is pure idiocy. A close second is using less for fewer

So does this mean we should flatten everything near the Darièn Gap with A-10s, or A-10's, or plain old A-10Bs?

As for the less and fewer conundrum, it's pretty simple: "Fewer" is for things you can count, and "less" is for things you can't.

The Atlantic has LESS water than the Pacific. Bob vowed to eat FEWER hamburgers.

A peeve of mine is using "that" instead of "who" when referring to people. "Wabigoon hates those WHO fart in church." "That" is for objects and such. "The dog THAT barked."

I need to sale some things. They are all for sell.

You could flatten everything with an A-10's gun, or if there was a bunch of A-10s, a bunch of A-10s' guns.

Well done, JOG.

Does anyone use 'whom' any more? I've rarely heard it. I never did figure out the whom vs who rules...and I never thought it was important enough to find out.

Rocky, actually that book's title is Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Book (and movie/play titles) are in italics. Book chapters and poems are inside quotation marks.

What drove me nuts back when I was writing for half-a-dozen magazines, and a book every couple years, was how many different editors used different style books. Many were also stuck in the era when they went to school.

One that drove me particularly crazy was the "copy editor" for a company that published several magazines, who'd graduated from a midwestern high school, the spent a little time at a now long-defunct business school. Her main reference was an ancient collegiate dictionary which contained some variety of style manual, perhaps the Chicago version (which continues to evolves, as do many others, due to the Internet.)

A good example was a hunting article where I mentioned poring over a topographic map. She changed poring to pouring, which has a completely different meaning. After reading the magazine I e-mailed her, pointing this out--and the next time I used pored or poring she put it inside quotation marks....

John

I lazied out on that, John. Just easier to use the quote marks. I'll take the penalty for capitalization.

NASA used to use the Associated Press Style Manual (and perhaps still does.) I tossed that one when my copy was 30 years old, and when the AP started going completely sinister-leaning.

Looking up at my book shelf I see style and usage manuals by Strunk & White, Fowler, Partridge, Johnson, Ehrlich, and Webster's. Plus the usual dictionary, thesaurus, and word books. Sixteen volumes, all told. Naturally, I still manage to screw something up at depressingly regular intervals. When I wrote for money, I'd spend a LOT of time trying to get exactly the correct phrasing or punctuation. But now I seldom bother. There are only a handful of people on the 'Fire who'd know the difference, anyway. Or care.

Rocky,

Yep, we still have a bunch of printed style manuals and dictionaries--but these days I often just go to the Internet versions, which like Internet loading data are updated far more often than printed manuals!

Luckily, only write for two magazines anymore, Sports Afield and Rifle Loony News. The editor of SA, Diana Rupp, knows her stuff--and I'm married to the editor of RLN, which makes any editorial discussions" easy!

I was down to two at the end, also. Varmint Hunter and Handloader until VHA died suddenly and the other one quit accepting freelance stuff. Both of them still have manuscripts of mine filed somewhere, never to see the dark of ink.

You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.

Enjoy your Sunday

The day of rest comes but once a week, and sorry am I that it does not come oftener. Man is so constituted that he can stand more rest than this. I often think regretfully that it would have been so easy to have two Sunday's in a week, and yet it was not so ordained. The omnipotent Creator could have made the world in three days just as easily as he made it in six, and this would have doubled the Sundays. Still it is not our place to criticize the wisdom of the Creator.
- "Reflections on the Sabbath" Mark Twain