This is my lame attempt at making a post about punctuation non-annoying. I mentioned a while back that my big pet peeves are English-related. Mistakes in grammar, punctuation, stuff like that. Some of you were English majors, so you may consider me a sad amateur. But others may be saying, I don't know squat about that stuff!
Stay cool, my babies. Holly gonna take care a'you.
Today we cover the letter S. [Side note: In my mind, with letters and numbers having colors, the letter S matches my hair.] Specifically, when is S preceded by an apostrophe? And how can I explain it without making things even more confusing than they are? Here are the basics:
You use an apostrophe before an S when something is possessive: This is Holly's blog. Those are Douglas's shoes.
You use an apostrophe before an S to eliminate the word "is": Holly is weird = Holly's weird.
You don't need an apostrophe when making a plural, even if that plural is a name: I made brownies and cakes. The Smiths went on vacation. There are not enough Hollys/Hollies in this world.
What if it's plural and possessive? That depends on whether the plural noun ends in S already. If it does, the apostrophe goes after the S: The two mammoths' tusks locked as they were fighting.
If the plural noun doesn't end in S, you add an S and put the apostrophe before it, just as you would a singular noun: This is the men's department, that is the children's department. (Are you listening, Macy's? I've seen your signs for the "mens" department. Do you not have professionals making those things? How many people do those signs go through before they are placed in prominent places downtown? Are you telling me no one in this chain noticed? No one??)
What if the plural and singular form of a word are the same, like moose?
I don't know that one. I suggest you write about gophers instead. The two gophers' tusks locked as they were fighting.
OK, that wasn't completely awful, was it? No one walking out in protest yet? Cool. Stay tuned: next time we'll cover pronouns as the object of verbs and prepositions. I'm almost giddy with anticipation.
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3 comments:
My english must be full of bad grammar and lousy spelling, sorry, i´ts the first time in 10 years I write in english with anyone, I only read it a lot.
Thank god you´re not into spanish or french, where we have a whole new world of gramatic rules for fun: accents. I really hate them, but you´d enjoy them, i´m sure.
Don't ever feel like you have to apologise for technical stuff here. You're too far away for me to slap your wrist with a ruler, anyway ;-).
Uh, yeah, I'm a stickler for these things, too, though I have been known to spot one of my own typos every now and then (the dog did it!). The thing about the possessive and names ending is "S" is acceptable two different ways. Douglas' or Douglas's are both acceptable, per my English teacher.
BTW, as a gal who grew up "in-the-South" and said, "where's my tennies at?" I scored a perfect score on the grammar section of my SATs. Yup. No one in my High School had ever done that, and they all thought I was dumb 'cuz I talked diff'rent.
Ha.
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