Job Discussion Forums

[007]

[veiledsentiments]

[johnslat]

Yikes - it would seem that I've opened a can - no, make that a shipping container - full of worms.
Well, it's all part of what makes grammar so much fun, right?
Anyway, I went googling and came across this, which seems to me to incorporate a lot of good sense:

"The problem is simple. While we exhort our students to follow those basic rules for apostrophes, our students have lot's more to worry about than a few simple, clear-cut case's presented sometime toward the end of the first or second week of class or assigned in some handbook exercises. In fact, I suspect their minds are often cluttered with more strange-looking apostrophe's than we ourselve's can possibly imagine.
And while we tell them our simple rules and talk to them about "possession" and "gerunds" and "it's," they are quietly ignoring our rather complex, strangely inconsistent and possibly impenetrable rules in favor of their own perhaps equally complex and strangely inconsistent--but perhaps more friendly and forgiving rules--"Never use 's to form a plural unless it looks better (as in lot's and Jones') or if you've seen it that way down at the Bonanza 88." "Never use an apostrophe with a gerund." "Never use 'Levi's' in the possessive." "Always use it's both for possession and for it is--unless you want to risk two rules instead of one." "When in doubt, leave those apostrophes out unless the word ends in s in it's original form or is plural or is one syllable or less or is in a place where no one will notice. Then make your decision based on euphony, common sense, and/or analogy."
Somehow, things get fuzzier than we want. Just how much can our students risk if they don't know what the odds are or they don't know exactly what possession is or don't know how to distinguish possessive pronouns from possessive nouns or don't know squat about the "feel" of nouns as modifiers and nouns as "possessives" and "double possessives"? I suspect we need to think twice about simply criticizing such students for their "sloppiness" or "lack of attention" or failure to "proof read" when, in fact, buying into our system of handbook knowledge may simply not be worth the risk or the time.
As I say, things are probably always easier to learn if you already know how to do them. I doubt that many of us would disagree, at least in theory, with that. But I do think that sometimes we underestimate the power of our own abilities, the strong, clear vision we sometimes get as experts and expert punctuators--and we forget what a vast tangle learning is for those who don't already know what they're supposed to know."

And here's a bit of punctuation history:

"The history of the apostrophe:
It is named after the Greek word apostrophos "of turning away, or elision". So apostrophe was the elision of a letter or letters in a word. That usage dates in writing from about 1611. Interestingly, it was earlier that the punctuation mark apostrophe came to be so named as it represented the letters elided. Shakespeare first uses the word in this sense in 1588 in Love's Labour Lost. It is possible that the word for the process preceded the word for the punctuation mark but didn't make it into the written record. English took the word from French apostrophe, which came from the Greek via Latin apostrophus.
Keep in mind [there'll be a short test, later] that this apostrophe is a bit different from the poetic device known as apostrophe, in which a thing, place, or deceased person is addressed as though it can understand what is being said. A good example comes from Wordsworth: "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee."
While we're on the subject, we should mention that the apostrophe used to denote possession is the same as the one described above that is used to denote a missing letter or letters. How, you ask? Well, the apostrophe in a word like fox's represents what was originally an e as in foxes. So, before the apostrophe was adopted, a possessive was formed just like a plural: "Look at the foxes beautiful tail." The use of the apostrophe for the e was then expanded to all words in order to denote possession. This became widespread after 1725.
Now for contractions. We know when the apostrophe was named, so we can surmise that it was probably around that time that the first contractions appeared with an apostrophe. Prior to that time, contractions existed, but the missing letter or letters were not identified with a punctuation mark. For example, as early as 1420 we have wynnot for will not, cant (1706) for can not/cannot, and dont (1670) for do not. Then we find won't in 1667, can't in 1741, and don't in 1672. Fowler says that the apostrophe was introduced in the 16th century, and this jibes with what we've found, as it takes a while for new entries in the language to make it into the written record."

There are, I suppose, more pressing matters (even in grammar) than when to use (or not use) an apostrophe.
But still, it's fun to explore all the possibilities (well, it is for me, anyway.)

Regards,
John

[veiledsentiments]

Please tell me that first paste was written tongue in cheek with intentional errors (or should I say error's)...

Either that or I missed being taught the 'looks better' rule.

VS

[johnslat]

Dear veiledsentiments,

Ah, you did notice. Tee-hee.
Regard's
John

[Duffy]

Ahh,

At last a thread that actually adheres to the true principles of the forum - Bless all.

Oh BTW whatever way you look at it, we all think we are right and will, for the most part continue doing things in our own way's.