You have it right. The Elements of Style suggests that 's be used for possessive nouns ending in the letter s. Of course, I've waffled between the two and have had different English teachers in my past give me differing answers. I won't say that Strunk and White have the final word on the matter, but if it's good enough for Stephen King it's good enough for me.
@KaTrian, that's the easiest way to find mistakes. Press "Post Reply" and they all show up clear as day.
It's a shift that's happened in the last ten to fifteen years. CMS, Turabian, and a few other style manuals all have it as Douglas's now. However, other elements are different depending on the manual used. For instance, in Turabian, Descartes is written as Descartes' because the final s is not pronounced. Any name that ends in eez als only gets the apostrophe, Aristophanes' writing. A plural noun, however, only gets one s, the politicians' votes. It all makes sense since written language tends to lengthen to better symbolize spoken language (though with text-speak, I wonder how this issue will change in the future." ________________________________ Another pet-peeve: a naked this, that, these, and those. Unless it is very, very clear, always put the referent after these words. In the style readings I do, I just mark them all wrong because using it without a referent leaves the subject to interpretation, and if it's not fiction, that method is not a good idea.
I believe he may be referring to the greengrocer's apostrophe ("Cucumber's $1.00 per pound") and incorrectly added apostrophes in some personal possessive pronouns ("He looked at the room and estimated it's dimensions."), or, conversely, pronoun-like contractions with the apostrophe left out ("Its only money, right?").
Thanks. But I was actually commenting (unsuccessfully, it seems) on his use of the word "irritates", which I believe should be "irritate". Please let me know if I am incorrect.
Ahh, I get it! Definitely too subtle to pick up for me without you saying something. Nonetheless, I think you're right about "irritate."
I know this isn't considered an error, but I loathe it when people don't use the Oxford comma. Peter, Paul, and Mary. Peter, Paul and Mary. I read the last part too quickly in my mind because there is no comma. But who am I to talk? I make one of the worst typing errors of all time: I double space after ending punctuation marks. When people use the semi-colon interchangeably with the colon, I freak out. That is too much for me. Or when something is written like this -- it is very annoying; angering, even.
I have to do a full document find/replace when writing papers for school because I double space after sentence-ending punctuation. There is nothing I can do about it; it's automatic.
My pet peeve is adverb-accentuated dialogue tags. My wife and I read a lot of amateur/fanfiction and a lot of new and/or lazy writers choose to use adverbs to describe how something is being said, rather than let the dialogue itsself convey the tone. "Hey," she said dejectedly. "What's wrong?" he said, quizzically. "I just suck at writing dialogue," she said honestly. Ugh...
When people place apostrophes before an 's' and it doesn't belong there (maid's and villa's instead of maids and villas). I get an invoice like that once a month, several words spelled wrong in the same way, and it drives me nuts.
I have the habit of double-spacing after a full stop, question mark, exclamation point, or colon. Those are ingrained into me from typing class (which was otherwise pretty much wasted ). It isn't really wrong, although it's out of fashion. But I leave it in my document. It's easy enough to do a global replace to get rid of it, but just try to do the reverse, should you encounter an editor who's also old school.
I learned to type in Canada back in the early 70s, and nobody ever told us to double space. I've been single-spacing all my life. You Americans have been duped by the powerful space-bar manufacturers lobby in Washington - they wanted you to wear out your space bars faster so they can sell more of them. Look what this has led to. Landfills everywhere overflowing with abused space bars savagely beaten before their times. Paper wasted because it's blanker than it really needs to be. Generations of American children with hideously overdeveloped thumb muscles. I could go on and on. It's not a pretty picture. I call upon you all to throw off the chains of your double-space-requiring overlords. Free yourselves, Americans! Remember the immortal words of Thomas Paine, or rather, not his words, but the immortal spaces between them! Who cares if the typewriter hadn't been invented in his day?
I find that the endings -ing and -ly happen to bug me a lot now, sadly because i think it was beaten into me on another forum. But so long as i don't use them a lot in my writing other than when the word specifically calls for it, then i avoid using it. I used it several times just now in that sentence, and thank goodness it doesn't bug me at the moment.
In what sense do you see a misuse of further and farther? With the exception of the use of further as a verb, they're pretty much the same word.
According to Grammar Girl, "[t]he quick and dirty tip is to use 'farther' for physical distance and 'further' for metaphorical, or figurative, distance."
Ah. I've never heard of Grammar Girl. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (concise edition), they're interchangeable. Is Grammar Girl a recognized authority?
