h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rats, I just read the second page, and discovered that a lot of what I wrote has already been said. Ahh well.

----

>>> so 'Jack's ball' would really mean 'Jack - his ball'

[duplicate] Interesting, but untrue, I believe. In the past, most nouns took an "-es" ending in the possessive case. This was then abbreviated to "-'s". Otherwise, it'd be 'Jill'r ball' (for Jill - her ball).
For example, originally it would have been 'Jesuses teaching', which became 'Jesus's teaching'. This has changed over time - largely top-down change from grammar authorities in (IIRC) the 19th century.

[duplicate] Of course, a topic of such vital importance as this one has already been covered in the guide. See A586640 - Declining English, which goes into plenty of detail on the topic. In particular, it has a point on 'collective disagreement' that you miss, and some stuff on differences between the UK and the US. It also has some good examples.

We need some rationalisation of this topic, because A586640 does cover a multitude of topics, including declension, pronouns, apostrophes, and parsing tricky sentences. This certainly needs to be eventually split up and replaced by smaller, interlinked entries on particular topics. Maybe even a university project.

[semi-duplicate] Contra the entry, it is known why 'its' doesn't take an apostrophe. I can't recall the details, but it's basically that English pronouns evolve much slower than other English words, and the word 'its' predates all this, along with all other pronouns. Which is why "this is my gun, that is your gun, these are our guns, those are their guns" isn't written as "this is me's gun, that is you's gun, the are we's gun, those are their's gun". It's nothing to do with 'impersonal possession' and everything to do with pronouns.

Also, there's no reason why the 1970's shouldn't have an apostrophe, signifying the ten years 'belonging to' the year 1970. It's quite logical enough, thanks terribly.

Finally, this entry is a little out of touch because linguists no longer speak of 'correct' usage, but only of 'common' usage. Eventually, pronouns may change to follow the way other nouns change in the possessive. Or vica versa. Grocer's English (or indeed Grocers' English) may become a recognised dialect... or it may not. Sneering at certain uses of English may be satisfying, but it's also illogical - and precisely as prejudiced as sneering at someone for hir accent.

There is only one standard against which writing (or speech) can be judged: does it communicate clearly? Using contractions is certainly not 'poor style', whatever that might mean. Indeed, use or not of contractions is an important tool to show emphasis and aid communication. For example:

"I won't eat that."
"I'll not eat that."
"I will not eat that."

These three sentences have subtly different feels to them, at least to me. The first has a slight childish air, the second is archaic and feels almost like a prediction, the third is a quite stubborn declaration.

Similarly quotations and speech can be done in different ways, and none of the ways are particularly 'correct'. Here on h2g2, both use single quotes. What's important is to be consistent, not to obey some arbitrary rules that are different on each side of the Atlantic. Heck, I've even seen << and >> used as quotation marks, while online people use the '>' symbol to notate quoted sections.

-Martin

One thing that puzzles me about the idea that in "CD's" the apostrophe is short for the 'isc' in 'Discs'... surely in that case it should have another apostrophe for the 'ompact' in 'Compact'? I think it's more the case that acronyms can optionally be an exception to the rule.

P's and q's is in the dictionary with the apostrophes in those positions. It's idiomatic usage, so it should be fine, regardless of grammar. See http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?r=67&term=p's%20and%20q's

Another interesting reason to use apostrophes to denote plurals of single characters is to avoid confusion with two letter words. IE, "let's talk about u's" would be the start of a conversation about the letter U, while "let's talk about us" would be the start of a conversation about you and me. I think that's a little contrived myself.

-Martin

The more detailed (and maybe accurate) origin of -'s and -s is given in this thread: F71565?thread=131698

grammatically, its ps and qs im afriad. standrad pluralisation. some of what lucinda wrote i agree with and will change. other bits, i dont and wont.

Uncle Heavy, everybody except you uses p's and q's and believes it to be grammatical, even the dictionaries. Why do you consider yourself to be correct?

did you not read the article? apostrophes denote possesstion not pluralisation. just cos lots of people say something is right doesnt mean its right.

Wrong! If everybody except Uncle Heavy says it, then there is a possibility that they are right. You have decided that apostrophes mean possession or omission. The dictionaries say they mean possession or omission or the pluralisation of letters.

but the rule is that apostrophe denotes possession not plurality. so therefore uncle heavy is right, cos he knows the rules. and cos its his article. and the dictionaries are very very wrong if they say pluralisation, cos ask any english teacher and they will tell you that apostrophes are nothing to do with plurals

A Guide entry has to be balanced: it has to consider the views of the vast majority of people in the world who aren't Uncle Heavy. Anyway, do tell us when you've made your changes. It looks like there's a lot to do...

-Martin

Well said Uncle Heavy It is, after all, your

But it's an accident of history that scribes started marking the missing e in possessive -es with an apostrophe, while not doing the same for the missing e in the (at the time) identical plural ending. Although the apostrophe is very strongly associated with possession, it is not inexcusable to use it in plurals where there is no alternative - namely with pees and cues

The greengrocer's apostrophe: it might be interesting to give some reasons why this is used, although roundly condemning it is far more fun.

I suspect the answer is simply that the grocer in question doesn't know where they go- so sticks them in everywhere until it 'looks right'

Yes, overextension, that sounds about right.

oh well...as far as im concerned, lucinda, there inst that much to do. but i will consider your points, many of which i thought were valid

I was thinking more of what everyone else has said here, LeKZ' entry, some of the threads off that entry, and the various weblinks provided. Lots of information to sift through...
Best of luck
-Martin

oh, i have been updating the article according to what people have said, dont worry im not always convinced im entirely correct

Heavy,

You can punctuate any way you like. But if this is going to be an Edited Entry on how everybody should use apostrophes, it had better be reasonably in line with current thinking.

1. Describing people who call apostrophes inverted commas as imbeciles is not acceptable.

2. Using an apostrophe in CD's is unnecessary but not wrong. An apostrophe is essential when forming the plural of letters.

umm... it looks the same as before to me...

The only change I could see is that he now uses the term inverted comma in the entry, although he refers to people who use it as imbeciles.

I was just on my way to say that

The fact that you've said 'known, by imbeciles, as an inverted comma', and then followed it with 'In English English, quotations are displayed with a single inverted comma' is...well....a worry. I suggest a change

Nice entry though Unc