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Post by Warwick on May 25, 2017 4:21:06 GMT
 Lunchtime and nothing else to do, so I thought I'd write this, as a public service. A sign of the omission of a letter or letters from a word. When words are abbreviated by omitting letters, an apostrophe is inserted to indicate this. Cannot - Can't Fish and chips - Fish 'n' chips Until - 'til A sign of possession. To indicate that something is the possession of someone or something, add 's to the end of the possessor. The engine of the Rover. The Rover's engine. When that word is plural and as a consequence already ends in an s, add the apostrophe after it, without adding an extra s. The engines of the Rovers. The Rovers' engines. The exceptions to the rule. (Why must there always be exceptions??) It is is abbreviated to it's, therefore when indicating the possessive case of the word It, the apostrophe isn't used so as to avoid confusion. (Yeah, right!) It's obvious that the cat didn't eat its food. It is acceptable, and normal, for apostrophes to be omitted from signs, road names, and place names. Jacksons Rd. Harrods Kings Cross And that brings us to when not to use an apostrophe. When you add an s to the end of a word to make it plural, you never use an apostrophe. Just add the s. But of course there are exceptions. If the word is difficult to pronounce by simply adding the sss sound to the end, then es is added, and pronounced ez. Churches Foxes Try saying Churchs, or Foxs) If the word ends in a y, you replace the y with an i and add es. Buggy - Buggies But, if there is an e before the y, you just add an s. Trolley - Trolleys Simples! You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. And if in doubt, leave it out. If you are unsure if an apostrophe is required when adding an s to the end of a word, you are more likely to be correct if you leave it out, than if you add one. And now, having said all that, I can offer no advice on the following problem. If anyone can, please help. The older I get, the more there seems to be a widening disconnection occurring between my brain and my typing fingers. (All 2 of them). My brain thinks they're. The fingers type their or there. I think wheels and I type wheel's. I'm sure you know how it is. Proof-reading before sending or posting doesn't help either. I read what I think I wrote. I only see the typos when I read it later, after it's been sent or posted - and they are glaringly obvious! (Should that be typo's? After all, it is an abbreviation of typographical errors).
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Post by davewright on May 25, 2017 8:04:53 GMT
When proof reading try reading the text backwards. This may help you not read what you think you wrote.
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Post by Eric R on May 25, 2017 8:07:34 GMT
so now we know!
Interesting that when you complete on-line text panels you often see a red underscore meaning an error but offers no resolution so you still have to decide for yourself - this site is a good case in point.
I imagine sites using American English and not English English is a cause.
I recently saw on UK tv a man who is going round at night time with a ladder and paint pot covering all the apostrophes he thinks are wrong on shop signs.
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Post by davewright on May 25, 2017 8:54:13 GMT
If you get a red squiggly line under a word you right click on the word and you will get suggestions to correct it. If you are not getting this then you are using the wrong browser. I hope none of you are using Internet Explorer (IE) as this is the worst browser. If you are not getting suggestions when you right click I suggest you change to using Firefox browser, which is one of the best out there. Those interested in avoiding government snooping could try Opera browser as this has an optional built in VPN. For those who don't know a VPN is a Virtual Private Network and it means all your browsing is routed via part of the world before it enters the general internet. This may be in your country but is usually the Netherlands. This means that your ISP will not have any information about your browsing habits to hand over to our government.
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Post by cstorey on May 25, 2017 17:58:09 GMT
The best apostrophe error I have seen recently was on a board placed outside a veterinary surgeon's surgery in Bishop's Castle in Shropshire . It said
FREE NEUTERING FOR FARMERS DOGS AND CATS
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Post by Warwick on May 26, 2017 3:10:41 GMT
When proof reading try reading the text backwards. This may help you not read what you think you wrote. Unfortunately Dave, the only thing that seems to help is the passage of time. The longer the time between when I wrote it and when I read it, the more likely I am to find a mistake. The problem is, if I read it slowly and word by word, I find the spelling errors and typos but don't see the grammatical or structural errors. BTW, how do you spell senility? ... I imagine sites using American English and not English English is a cause. ... Eric, I use Firefox and have done so for a long time. When you right-click on the word underlined in red, as Dave suggests, Firefox also lets you choose the dictionary. (British, American, Australian) I haven't checked, but there might even be a Geordie one for John W. ... I recently saw on UK tv a man who is going round at night time with a ladder and paint pot covering all the apostrophes he thinks are wrong on shop signs. They're referred to as a Grocer's apostrophe. It's a very old term, so the problem with shopkeepers' signs must have been around for a very long time. We had someone doing the exact opposite around here several years ago. The Princes Highway is a major interstate road that runs approximately around the coast from Sydney to Melbourne and on to Adelaide and Port Augusta. It's the main route between where I live and Melbourne. Along the way, wherever there was a sign that said Princes Hwy., someone had come along and inserted the missing apostrophe. However, what is now happening as we hurtle faster and faster down the path of language bastardisation, some people are miss-hearing the name and thinking that it is the Princess Hwy. I've even heard it called this in a police announcement on the radio. This is quite strange as it is one of the state's major roads and has had this name for nearly 100 years. It passes right through this town and there are businesses here that spell it as Princess in their address. Clearly they don't know its history as it was named when it was officially opened by the Prince of Wales in 1920, in a ceremony that took place not 300m from where I sit. The best apostrophe error I have seen recently was on a board placed outside a veterinary surgeon's surgery in Bishop's Castle in Shropshire . It said FREE NEUTERING FOR FARMERS DOGS AND CATS Did you check? It might not have been a mistake. |
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Post by djm16 on May 26, 2017 8:10:40 GMT
"Eats, shoots and leaves" is the title of a book on this very subject.
Grocers' rather than Grocer's, since grocer is plural.
There is also a long article Wikipedia, pointing out that until the mid C19 an apostrophe before the plural "s" was normal practice and indicated pronounciation rather than possession!
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Post by Warwick on May 26, 2017 8:37:59 GMT
... Grocers' rather than Grocer's, since grocer is plural. ... Yes, I pondered on that and decided that if I had to guess it was probably singular. c.f. A fisherman's knot, or a fireman's lift, etc. |
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Post by Warwick on May 26, 2017 23:55:03 GMT
"Eats, shoots and leaves" is the title of a book on this very subject. ... I thought that was a book about wombats. ... There is also a long article Wikipedia, pointing out that until the mid C19 an apostrophe before the plural "s" was normal practice and indicated pronunciation rather than possession! That's interesting. |
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Post by djm16 on May 30, 2017 13:54:33 GMT
So the plural of book was bookes, then abbreviated to book's then finally in modern english books.
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Post by Warwick on May 31, 2017 8:42:10 GMT
Perhaps Book was originally spelt Booke. Like Shoppe, and Olde. (I'll have to check that) The 'e' was silent, unlike when people these days read a sign that says Ye Olde Shoppe, and pronounce them as 'y' or 'ie'. My surname is Brooks. In the 1600s it was Brooke, and in the 1500s it was Broke. That seems quite appropriate now.  And of course there is also a Brookes version. Many of the changes in the spelling of people's names came about due to errors or misunderstanding in record keeping or transcription. |
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Post by djm16 on Jun 1, 2017 0:18:03 GMT
This account of the tacky "Ye" of mocke Tudore is fascinating:
A good part of the reason for many of the vagaries and inconsistencies of English spelling has been attributed to the fact that words were fixed on the printed page before any orthographic consensus had emerged among teachers and writers. Printing also directly gave rise to another strange quirk: the word the had been written for centuries as þe, using the thorn character of Old English, but, as no runic characters were available on the European printing presses, the letter “y” was used instead (being closest to the handwritten thorn character of the period), resulting in the word ye, which should therefore technically still be pronounced as “the”. It is only since the archaic spelling was revived for store signs (e.g. Ye Olde Pubbe) that the "modern" pronunciation of ye has been used.
Regarding the spelling of booke, there was no consistency, but we do know that Latin pronunciation remained largely unchanged from the 3rd Century to the present day, and that "es" word endings were a separate syllable, as in "di-es" and "fid-es". It is not too large a jump to assume that bookes was also pronounced as two syllables.
Hence when the transition to the single syllable version occured, to indicate received pronunciation would have required omitting the second syllable, the omission being indicated by the apostrophe.
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Post by Warwick on Jun 1, 2017 3:22:22 GMT
I knew about the thorn, with respect to the spelling of ye and it ultimately changing to the. Changes like that seem to be happening at a faster rate these days, thanks largely to mass media I suppose. I notice that the pronunciation of str is now beginning to blur into shtr, and st is becoming sch. Words like strange are becoming shtrange. Student becomes schudent. Probably just vocal laziness. You don't need to open your mouth, or move your lips and tongue. Another trend that seems to be developing is the addition of ality to the end of a word, even if the word it's added to already has the same meaning as that intended by the invented new word. It's all about making words and sentences longer and more important looking, or sounding, without actually saying much. Politics and marketing. Marketing and politics. And I'm not even going to mention levverage and levveraging. (Levveragality?) tinyurl.com/ybqjdh54 |
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And of course there is also a Brookes version. Many of the changes in the spelling of people's names came about due to errors or misunderstanding in record keeping or transcription.