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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Janice Shell who wrote (27)1/1/1998 4:30:00 PM
From: Jack Clarke  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 4710
 
Hi Janice:

You probably shouldn't get me started, since I have to get to the grocery store (forgot some things this morning). But...

Those apostrophes for plurals are driving me crazy too. It's even worse when used with proper names. We get Christmas cards from The Carter's for example. When I see this possessive masquerading as a plural, my mind says, "The carter's what? Their home? Their family? Their dog?" For some people, that terminal "s" doesn't look safe without the protection of the apostrophe.

The apostrophic plural (sorry for the neologism) is a little more defensible with those acronyms and numerals, as you point out, but I always write "VCRs" and think it's better.

While we're picking on people, let's mount an attack on the elimination of the adjectival past participle in grocery stores (since that's where I'm heading). I mean CAN VEGETABLES instead of CANNED. I saw a sign on the road offering BOIL PEANUTS, as if it were an exhortation or command. I speak pretty good Southern Dialect myself, so I can appreciate how the sign poster pronounces it himself: "Bawl PEE-nuts". But that's another subject.

Nice to hear from you. I thought this thread, which I just discovered, had been forsaken by all you language lovers. (How do we make a pseudoscientific word of that? I want to say linguaphiles, but that's mixing Latin and Greek, a "no-no". Maybe glottophiles? Anybody got any ideas?

Jack



To: Janice Shell who wrote (27)1/2/1998 8:40:00 AM
From: bearshark  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 4710
 
Hi Janice:

Several of your notes identified items that bother me. A few years ago, I used proper English in my work. However, my work had to be reviewed by our editors. I try to avoid splitting infinitives. The editor changed my writing by splitting my infinitives. When I told him about it, he explained that my writing was archaic and that splitting infinitives is now acceptable.

My grammar is far from perfect but I am pleased to be archaic.


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