Apostrophes or is it apostrophe's?

[SheFly]

Most of these types of questions depend on the style book you're referring to.

You mean: Most of these types of questions depend on the style book to which you are referring. Right?

SheFly (That is a situation up with which I cannot put. Mark Twain)

eta - I just read to the end of the messages. This post is NOT a target at Bluebug, nor anyone else on the forum. MY personal grammar pet peeve happens to be dangling participles. That and using phrases like "In order to" instead of just saying "to". My issue only. Oh wait - I think I just wrote an incomplete sentence!

[OakLeaf]

You mean: Most questions of this type depend on the style book to which you are referring.

Fixed that for ya.

[SadieKate]

Anyone remember the Barbara Cartland novels which were quite racy back in the day? At camp we used to read them aloud . . . including the dot-dot-dots.

Back then (yes, the Dark Ages) it all would have been typeset. Oy.

Oh. Sorry. Oy . . .

[jessmarimba]

You guys might find this funny.

At Target, at the pharmacists' counter, they have a little pamphlet:

Where's it at? Here's a map!

"Where's it at?" Really, Target? Your editing staff didn't catch that? It MIGHT be acceptable if "at" rhymed with "map." But it doesn't. It makes me cringe so badly that I may email corporate to ask what on earth they were thinking.

[BikeDutchess]

I should have taken a picture of the sign at the grocery store last night. A professionally printed sign, I might add.

Turkey's $0.99/lbs

[lph]

Late in. I have my pet peeves, but then I have my blind spots too. I can blame them on being bilingual but truth is there's a limit to how much I want to check on my posts.

A few thoughts: good spelling, grammar and syntax are assets when trying to communicate well. But so is a clear idea of what you're trying to say, to whom. You have terrible spelling and still get your idea or message through loud and clear, and you can write technically flawlessly, and have people going "huh?" It's the idea that gets communicated in the end that matters most to me, not the technique along the way. And on this board I enjoy a lot of the random rambling too.

Back to apostrophes: in Norwegian we use a single apostrophe to indicate possession if the name ends in a s, like Jesus' someone mentioned above. Is this not used otherwise in English at all? I think it looks rather elegant

[skhill]

Veronica, thanks for teaching your students these sorts of things. I used to work in our public community college, and I was appalled at the inability of most of the students to write a complete sentence. These days, one of my friends teaches English at a for-profit technical school; we can all tell when she's been grading papers from her foul mood. She says most of her students are functionally illiterate, despite having a GED or high school diploma.

[Irulan]

You guys might find this funny.

At Target, at the pharmacists' counter, they have a little pamphlet:

Where's it at? Here's a map!

"Where's it at?" Really, Target? Your editing staff didn't catch that? It MIGHT be acceptable if "at" rhymed with "map." But it doesn't. It makes me cringe so badly that I may email corporate to ask what on earth they were thinking.

Um, Isn't "where's" a contraction of "where is"? I thought we used an apostrophe in a contraction. /confused.

[Veronica]

The apostrophe is fine. I thought the problem was the preposition at the end of the sentence.

Veronica

[jessmarimba]

The apostrophe is fine. I thought the problem was the preposition at the end of the sentence.

Veronica

Yep. "Where is it?" would be acceptable. "Where is it at?" just drives me up the wall. Totally unnecessary.

[OakLeaf]

Reviving this thread, not without trepidation, to share this thought-provoking piece.

[Ja Da Dee]

It looks like they need a "Bob the Angry Flower" poster

http://www.angryflower.com/aposter.html

[smilingcat]

Reviving this thread, not without trepidation, to share this thought-provoking piece.

reminds me of William Safire and his painful nit picking of bad grammar.

I make no bones about it. I gave up on it long time ago. Like LPH, I really do not have a first language. My other language is Japanese and let me telll youuuu that the grammar is worldly different that it might as well be (been) an alien language. Even Chinese have some similarities to English but not Japanese. Tis why the Chinese are able to speak more correct American or British English whereas Japanese, well , not so much.

Spoken language is alive, vibrant and full of life. It should change with generations. How else can it express each generations unique view of the world? We had the rat pack, '50s generation had theirs, hippies, yippies, yuppies, X-gen, valley talk oh my gawd!!, grunge talk. Makes it more interesting. And now with texting, even spelling is going through some major transformation. It's amusing not bemused.

[OakLeaf]

... and just saw this one (best image I could find and I'm not going to type it over, sorry):

[bmccasland]

... and just saw this one (best image I could find and I'm not going to type it over, sorry):

Those are great!
I should have posted a reply in the theme, but my brain isn't working so well, as it were.