The Discouraging Word [no permalinks, look for the 21 August entry] has a good entry on a slight tremor in the farce vis-a-vis the apostrophe, its history, and (ab)usage. There's even an Apostrophe Preservation Society in Boston, England, fighting the good fight. I simply love it that the apostrophe was originally a sign of a dropped e in both the nominative plural and the possessive singular before becoming associated with the possessive only. Oh, and beware the insidous greengrocer's apostrophe. I have seen this creature in the wild, and its appearance signals madness.
[Addendum 08/22/03: Languagehat, as always, has some eloquent opinions in his entry on this topic.]
Posted by jim at August 21, 2003 09:29 AM | TrackBackThere's a newsgroup devoted to most matters apostrophe: alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe (discussion of pluralizing apostrophes also permitted). To tell the truth it's on the downturn, and I think its glory days are behind it, but occasionally worthwhile stuff gets posted there. For a while there was a custom of using all forms of commonly mistaken homophones in a single sentence, either all their forms correctly or all incorrectly, but they're getting less common. It's not really too hard to make one if you use a semicolon, though I think using two would be a bit overboard, and anyway you shouldn't have to go to such extreme lengths to do it.
Posted by: ben wolfson on August 21, 2003 07:01 PMI saw mention of it on your site and took a look around on Goggle Groups. Somebody should do a syntax of UseNet group names: the original hierarchical ones, the repeated, three verb ones, and the ones that form a phrase of sentence.
Posted by: jim on August 21, 2003 10:49 PMUse it wisely or risk Bob's wrath.
Posted by: des on August 22, 2003 12:34 AM