'Proper punctuation' to return after apostrophe ban

'Proper punctuation' to return after apostrophe ban(bbc.co.uk)

12 points by UltimateEdge 2 years ago | 4 comments

sowbug 2 years ago |

This is as good a place as any to tell a story about a grammar disagreement that effectively broke up a local social group. To protect the innocent, let's say the group consisted of cousins.

It was a new club, and its logo was being designed. The first draft came back misspelled. But club members couldn't agree what the correct spelling was.

Group A said it was "The Cousins Club." They said "cousins" was an attributive adjective.

Group B said it was "The Cousins' Club." To them, "cousins'" was a plural possessive adjective.

Group C said it was "The Cousin's Club." They couldn't name the specific part of speech, and during the discussion demonstrated that apostrophe's belong in lot's of place's.

The club did not survive this disagreement. I believe they did get the logo designed, but there were enough hurt feelings from the discussion that all the original momentum was lost.

zeristor 2 years ago | |

There’s Reuters. Founded by Paul Reuter.

“The company returned to private ownership in 1916, when all shares were purchased by Roderick Jones and Mark Napier; they renamed the company "Reuters Limited", dropping the apostrophe.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters

cafard 2 years ago | |

It has been a long time since I looked at it, but I remember the Government Printing Office Style Manual preferring to exclude apostrophes. Not "Veterans' Administration" but "Veterans Administration", and so on.

One feels for the cousins who didn't care about the punctuation or its absence, and simply wanted to gather.

jurassicfoxy 2 years ago |

The software industry (I include myself here) is so incredibly crappy that it's easier to change the basics of English than write decent programs.