hint's for you folks regarding apostrophe's

1.5k · February 3, 2003

http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

I thought some of you might find these hint's helpful.

6.5k · February 3, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Snazz:
http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

I thought some of you might find these hint's helpful.

thank's

February 3, 2003

Hey, whats you're problem?

Charlie

"One should never begin a journey by heading in the wrong direction."

February 3, 2003

It's ironic that the author's title line has the incorrect use of the apostrophe...

...unless it was intentional (I think NOT)

1.7k · February 3, 2003

I think it was intentional. But he should have just included the image by reference:

February 3, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by The Artful Dodger:
It's ironic that the author's title line has the incorrect use of the apostrophe...

...unless it was intentional (I think NOT)

I don;t think this guy get's it!

Charlie

"One should never begin a journey by heading in the wrong direction."

February 3, 2003

Definition: What you are awarded when you catch the biggest POS in the competition.

s'wonderful...s'marvelous...

Cheer's

BP

February 3, 2003

Firstly, the cartoonist's use of the apostrophe is correct. "Bob's" is a possessive. The apostrophe is appropriate.

One common error is regarding possesives that end in "s."

Charles's dog bit me. This is correct.

Charles' dog bit me. That's wrong.

The children's pictures are nice. That's OK.

The houses's doors are blue. This is wrong. (Who says "houseses"?)

It should be:

The houses' doors are blue.

It could be written:

The doors of the houses are blue.

Possessive plurals that end in "s" are the ones that have no "s" after the apostrophe. A good rule of thumb is that the spelling usually follows pronunciation.

Parsa

February 3, 2003

Who realy gives a rat's arse'?

1.6k · February 3, 2003

"It's one of those things that gets under its skin, isn't it," said the It.

[This message was edited by Sissy-n-CR on February 03, 2003 at 02:46 PM.]

3k · February 3, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Parsa:
It should be:

The houses' doors are blue.

It could be written:

The doors of the houses are blue.

I know they teach your example as being correct these days, but back when I went to school only your latter example ("The doors of the houses are blue.") was acceptable. We were taught that under no circumstance could an inanimate or non-living thing "possess" anything.

February 3, 2003

Yes, "The houses' doors are blue" is a bit cumbersome anyway. I teach science (and I'm 40), and I keep having students question me about why I write Charles's Law instead of Charles' Law. I think this topic was discussed on "A Way with Words" on PBS radio recently.

February 3, 2003

"Charles's dog bit me. This is correct."

Nope, I just talked to Charles. He said, "That ain't my dog!"

Visit the Mississippi Geocaching Forum at

http://pub98.ezboard.com/bgeocachingms

5k · February 3, 2003

Looking at Diana Hacker's Writer's Reference seems to indicate that several dos and don'ts with regard to apostrophe usage are acceptable either way.

She says: "Use an apostrophe and -s to pluralize numbers mentioned as numbers, letters mentioned as letters, words mentioned as words, and abbreviations."

Examples:

"Peggy skated nearly perfect figure 8's."

"The bleachers in our section were marked with large red J's."

"We've heard enough maybe's."

"You must ask to see their I.D.'s."

She adds:

"Exception: An -s alone is often added to the years in a decade: the 1980s."

and

"Note: The Modern Language Association recommends no apostrophe in plurals of numbers and abbreviations: figure 8s, VCRs."

With that in mind, feel free to call 'em GPS's or GPSs. I won't mind.

Jamie

February 3, 2003

For those looking for the ultimate in reference, the Chicago Manual of Style is the ultimate writer's bible. There are few questions (if any) that are not answered in this authorative reference.

It's not a "must have" for most people and it's rather expensive, but I thought I'd share this in case anyone might ever wonder what the "ultimate reference" book of writing might be today. There's precious few writers who don't find at least a few "corrections" to be made to a manuscript.

Anyway, I thought I'd share in case anyone's interested. BTW, that's a really neat cartoon and I'm going to print that out; it will be really fun to share at my next writing group.

Cheers!

If you hide it, they will come.

Grandmaster Cache

Tank at: FISH WHISPERER'S LAGOON

February 3, 2003

How many times have you seen "it's" used incorrectly like this: (From a quote on a coffee cup) "We take pride in our town and it's people." Possessive spelling is "its" without an apostrophe. The contraction for "it is" is "it's". So.... It's a great thing when we can write a word with its apostrophe in the correct place.

3.5k · February 3, 2003

I've had that cartoon hanging on my cubical wall for about six months now. It's sort of an inside joke about another employee's constant need for re-editing.

Bret

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

When a man found it, he hid it again." Mt. 13:44

February 3, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Jamie Z:
"...With that in mind, feel free to call 'em GPS's or GPSs..."

...but I thought we carried GPSrs that used the GPS?

Also, is it just me, or do Mr. Snazz[apostrophe]s threads of late leave you reaching for the Tylenol? I[apostrophe]m still losing sleep over his 'How many of you have found geocaches?' poll.

February 3, 2003

There are billboards around here advertising "Sofa's $399". I can't stand it. This one's going out to everyone on my list.

----------------------------------------------------------

Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore,

You will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea.

4.5k · February 3, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Parsa:
Yes, "The houses' doors are blue" is a bit cumbersome anyway. I teach science (and I'm 40), and I keep having students question me about why I write Charles's Law instead of Charles' Law. I think this topic was discussed on "A Way with Words" on PBS radio recently.

Arent your student's right? If I'm not m'staken, it was Antoine and Nick Charle who wrote the law making it the Charles' brothers law - plural!

Or would that be the Charle brother's law?

Alan

February 3, 2003

Cuz Jeremy's 'bout to close it down. My too scents sez it taint a cat's @ss trophy, it's not.

February 3, 2003

This is the best post I've read in awhile.

-Let's play Global Thermonuclear War-

1.5k · February 3, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Cholo:
Cuz Jeremy's 'bout to close it down. My too scents sez it taint a cat's @ss trophy, it's not.

Close what down?

February 4, 2003

Actually, this symbol -> ' is not an apostrophe; it's a tick mark used to note a measurement in feet such as 5'9".

Back in the days before computers with proportional fonts, it was the only thing available. Now, we have the proper apostrophe and quotation marks available at our fingertips and few people use them. Heck, most WP software will actually let you use SmartQuotes that automatically substitutes the correct mark.

Of course, in email we'll always be stuck it since no one decided on a common way to do it back in the day. It doesn't bother me as much as when I see a tick mark in advertising or on billboards since those are done by "professional" graphic designers.

Here is an example.

9.2k · February 4, 2003

Let's talk about the really important stuff. Namely, there's no such word as NOONE! Just stop it! Unless you're referring to the lead singer of Herman's Hermits, it's NO ONE. That's right - two words.

There. I feel better now.

Oh, and the first person responding with "Noone cares", or any derivatives gets 10 points deducted from their final score for gross lack of originality.

4.5k · February 4, 2003

Someday I'll get it right.

1.7k · February 5, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by CreagerStone Family:
Heck, most WP software will actually let you use SmartQuotes that automatically substitutes the correct mark.

Please don't say "most WP software" when you mean "Microsoft Word." Those quotes are correct in appearance, but not correct in the sense that operating systems using standardized character sets can read them. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put the marks they use for "smart" quotes in the "C1 controls" part of the Unicode/ISO 8859 character set, which means that they can cause interesting and unintended consequences on operating systems that use the C1 controls in their correct usage as control characters. Why did Microsoft do this? Well, it's because those characters aren't actually defined in ISO 8859-1 at all. Unicode defines those characters in the "General Punctuation" range at 0x2018-0x2019 for the left and right single quotes and x0201C-0x201D for the left and right double quotes.

quote:
Of course, in email we'll always be stuck it since no one decided on a common way to do it back in the day.

No, in email we'll be stuck with the nondirectional quotes until such time as Unicode becomes a more standard encoding for messages, since email is one of those applications that is necessarily cross-platform.

So what does this have to do with geocaching? Well, you know how you get those funky characters in your GPX files where you think there should be an em dash or a quote mark? Those are almost always due to some non-ASCII character that was inserted by someone's word processor or webpage processor or other thing that takes words and webpages and chops them up into a fine puree.

February 5, 2003

You know what? My last name, being of Italian origin, has an apostrophe in it. I wish finance companies and so forth would write their software to understand that the D' is part of my name - NOT my middle initial.

----------

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be also be like him.

February 5, 2003

I hate apostrophe's

____________________________________________________________

"Seek and ye shall find"

February 5, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by SpinnerB82002:
http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/mica/shootingsoldier.gif I hate apostrophe's

You hate apostrophe's...what?

February 5, 2003

You hate apostrophe's...what?

I really don't hate them. It just gave me the excuse I needed to post the shooting soldier. I like the way he looks, so here he is (with a twist)

___ __ ____________________________ ___

Longing for better times

February 5, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by OlBluesguy:
Who realy gives a rat's arse'?

Lots of people! I saw this programme once all about it. This guy had a load of self adhesive apostrophes made which he had in his pocket so he could add them to billboards, shop windows etc where they had been ommitted - it annoyed him that much!

And this show made me realise how much it gets under my skin also, although I'm not carrying apostrophes around with me. (I have been known to graffiti them in on occasion!)

The point is that it's one of those weird things that gets to people.

I don't claim to be an authority on apostrophe usage - I've learned a great deal about it from this thread, and I do hope I haven't ommitted or misused an apostrophe in this post - if I have, I hope you'll all be kind enough not to point it out!

"The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money"

6.5k · February 5, 2003

It is also one of Frank Zappa's best albums, with Don't eat the Yellow Snow and Cozmic Debris!

Be careful what you wish for!

February 5, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by SpinnerB82002:
http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/mica/shootingsoldier.gif I hate apostrophe's

____________________________________________________________

"Seek and ye shall find"

I didn't used to hate them. But I can feel it coming on.

"We've got the hardware and the software, the plans and the maps ..." -- Citizen Wayne Kramer

February 5, 2003

My favorite glaring illiteracies are the signs you see behind diner counters, written in magic marker, that say things like:

"TRY"

OUR

HOT DOG'S

Not only do they use the apostrophe wrong, but there are quotation marks that are there for no reason known to man...

It's enough to make you loose your mind or have a nucular meltdown.

Scott

--

Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

4.5k · February 5, 2003

Who gave this topic 5 stars?

Alan

February 5, 2003

Excuse me for being nit-picky; but isn't GPS (Global Positioning System) slightly inaccurate for our little bitty handheld units? Wouldn't "GPU" (Global Positioning Unit) or "GPR" (Global Positioning Receiver) be more accurate?

happy hunting all,

LKD

February 5, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Alan2:
Who gave this topic 5 stars?

Alan

You know, um, ah, I mean, like you know, um, a genius you know, like yeah, you know, uh, who you know gives, um a ratz rectum, you know. Exactly, you know....could it, you know, be SATAN!!!??

Is it a coincidence that three of our top officials, Dick, Colin, and Bush, are named for lower body parts?

The Lonely Semi-Colon

February 6, 2003

Now that I'm thinking about, I am reminded of another gross misunderstanding of how to use apostrophes - contractions. It really makes my flesh crawl when I see this particular error.

Where people will write "wan't" and "differen't", under the poor knowledge that "any word which ends with 'nt' must contain an apostrophe".

Do a google on "wan't", you may be suprised how many hits you'll get.

----------

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be also be like him.

3k · February 6, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by azog:
Now that I'm thinking about, I am reminded of another gross misunderstanding of how to use apostrophes - contractions.

Hey azog, thanks for bringing to mind my favorite line from Carlisle Floyd's opera "Susannah":

(Found in Act 1, Scene 4. Susannah [a character in a predicament similar to Hester Prim's in "The Scarlet Letter"] brought a bowl of peas to a community dinner.)

(Mrs. McLean) "I wouldn't tech them peas o' her'n.

It's a fun opera ... I recommend it to anyone who loves to hear the english language mangled almost beyond recognition.

[This message was edited by BassoonPilot on February 06, 2003 at 07:18 AM.]

February 6, 2003

By singling out the poor apostrophe and discriminating against it, you are showing your punctuationism. What about the colon, or the exclamation mark, or the oft misused comma? Where'e the hate for those marks?

February 6, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy:
Please don't say "most WP software" when you mean "Microsoft Word."

Since that's not what I meant, that's not what I said. Since it's so stupidly simple, I can't imagine a word processor that's worth using not having that feature. Did Corel in their infinite wisdom omit that feature?

For Pete's sake, even FileMaker Pro has that ability.

Typographically and stylistically, that's the right way to do it. If you don't, your document looks unprofessional.

As for using Word to generate HTML...well, this is a family oriented forum.

1.7k · February 6, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by CreagerStone Family:

quote:
Originally posted by Warm Fuzzies - Fuzzy:
Please don't say "most WP software" when you mean "Microsoft Word."

Since that's _not_ what I meant, that's _not_ what I said. Since it's so stupidly simple, I can't imagine a word processor that's worth using _not_ having that feature. Did Corel in their infinite wisdom omit that feature?

Did you choose to ignore the part of my post where I pointed out why "smart quotes" are a bad thing as long as no standard single-byte character set has official characters for those four symbols?

Microsoft, I expect to ignore standards. Corel, I expect better from (but I don't have WordPerfect installed on this machine, so I can't check whether they use the broken CP1252 character set as well.)

Bottom line: if you're writing text for the Internet and you plan to publish it in anything other than Acrobat PDF or some proprietary format, turn off "smart quotes" because if you don't, someone somewhere will eventually think you're an idiot for not knowing the difference between a quote mark and a question mark.

My personal experience with this has to do with trying to fix the broken, bozotic control characters inserted by unsuspecting users of Microsoft products when they're creating cache pages. I'll take a ugly-but-readable straight tick mark over a nonstandard-but-beautiful-if-you-can-see-it apostrophe any day.

March 31, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Centex Trekker:
"...Excuse me for being nit-picky; but isn't GPS (Global Positioning System) slightly inaccurate for our little bitty handheld units? Wouldn't "GPU" (Global Positioning Unit) or "GPR" (Global Positioning Receiver) be more accurate?..."

I believe that most folks who avoid - and correctly so I think - using 'GPS' opt instead to use 'GPSr' (Global Positioning System Receiver).

March 31, 2003

OK, so we've come to one conclusion, and that's that people are stupid.

Did I use my apros..approst...that friggin' little mark correctly?

We evolve. The data is in the strata.

April 1, 2003

I'm glad this thread found its way back to the first page. I just came from the BMV, and they have a sign proudly stating "Passport Photo's Taken Here"

ARGH!

3.1k · April 1, 2003

quote:
Originally posted by Milgren:
I just came from the BMV, and they have a sign proudly stating "Passport Photo's Taken Here"

Hey, maybe it means "Passport Photo Is Taken Here".

BMV: "Yeah, yeah, that's what it means!"

"Winter's just the curtain. Spring will take the bow"

-- Richard Shindell, Spring

[This message was edited by Dinoprophet on April 01, 2003 at 11:08 AM.]

24.7k · April 1, 2003

Only the Snazzmeister could make a huge thread out of an appostrophy. Hell I can't spell it so how in the heck could you expect me to use it correctly?

Wherever you go there you are.

April 1, 2003

I don't thin' i't reall'y mat'ters h'ow we typ'e, bu't mor'e of 'what we' t'ype.

GP'S....G'P'S'R....bi'g de'al.

My time, your time is limited, but time itself is unlimited.

2.6k · April 1, 2003

Yeah.

Many threads have been created just to beat poor spellers over the knuckles. I think it's rather pathetic that some discount so many for poor grammar and bad spelling.

We have to install spell checkers in our browsers so these Spelling Zealots don't flame you. Questioning your intelligence.

Who cares! At least people are participating in the discussions.

Do not extend your expectations unto others, you will not be disappointed by the stupid things they do.

Mokita!

hint's for you folks regarding apostrophe's

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