O, apostrophe!
Jan. 5th, 2003 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistDid you know that the apostrophe you know about isn't the only kind of apostrophe?
ap·os·tro·phe : the addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically
One that occurs to me is another sonnet I memorized in high school, this one by Sir Philip Sidney; it starts "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climbst the skies..." See, things with this type of apostrophe also tend to have words like "climbst" in them. And "O." Lots of "O"-ing goes on.
This journal entry (henceforth) is not about that kind of apostrophe.
I don't think I notice errors in spelling and grammar because I'm an English major. I think I'm an English major because I'm the type who notices errors in spelling and grammar.
Grammar especially. Not only is it more fun and more interesting than spelling, but there are more errors. Speaking doesn't have that many spelling errors, you know, but often has grammatical ones.
(Random--yet somehow seemingly related--piece of information: in one of the spelling bees I was forced to be in between fourth and seventh grade, I got myself out by spelling "grammatical" wrong.)
But the kind I'm going to talk about is obviously not a matter of speaking. It's a matter of apostrophes.
I would just like to take this opportunity to say that plurals are not made by adding apostrophes to singular nouns. In a related but less prevalent pet peeve of mine, apostrophes are used to make things possessive. It's not the other way around, as I've seen some people claim. I find this terribly aggravating. Though much less aggravating than the people who don't even care or have a reason why or when they use apostrophes at all, but seem to drop them randomly in words that may or may not end with "s."
The only thing worse (concerning apostrophes, anyway) is it. Yes, "it." I can't think of any word that causes apostrophe-related trauma like "it" does.
See, this time the possessive of it--something belong to "it"--doesn't have an apostrophe. What does is the contraction of "it is." Mostly this one bugs me when I see "it's" when "its" is what's meant. Even people who are smart and probably know better, people I hold to a higher standard, do this.
I don't really think less of these people, or anything. It's kind of annoying, but unrest in the Middle East and the lack of anything good on cable and the fact that no one cares about making an operating system better than Windows are all far more annoying to me.
ap·os·tro·phe : the addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically
One that occurs to me is another sonnet I memorized in high school, this one by Sir Philip Sidney; it starts "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climbst the skies..." See, things with this type of apostrophe also tend to have words like "climbst" in them. And "O." Lots of "O"-ing goes on.
This journal entry (henceforth) is not about that kind of apostrophe.
I don't think I notice errors in spelling and grammar because I'm an English major. I think I'm an English major because I'm the type who notices errors in spelling and grammar.
Grammar especially. Not only is it more fun and more interesting than spelling, but there are more errors. Speaking doesn't have that many spelling errors, you know, but often has grammatical ones.
(Random--yet somehow seemingly related--piece of information: in one of the spelling bees I was forced to be in between fourth and seventh grade, I got myself out by spelling "grammatical" wrong.)
But the kind I'm going to talk about is obviously not a matter of speaking. It's a matter of apostrophes.
I would just like to take this opportunity to say that plurals are not made by adding apostrophes to singular nouns. In a related but less prevalent pet peeve of mine, apostrophes are used to make things possessive. It's not the other way around, as I've seen some people claim. I find this terribly aggravating. Though much less aggravating than the people who don't even care or have a reason why or when they use apostrophes at all, but seem to drop them randomly in words that may or may not end with "s."
The only thing worse (concerning apostrophes, anyway) is it. Yes, "it." I can't think of any word that causes apostrophe-related trauma like "it" does.
See, this time the possessive of it--something belong to "it"--doesn't have an apostrophe. What does is the contraction of "it is." Mostly this one bugs me when I see "it's" when "its" is what's meant. Even people who are smart and probably know better, people I hold to a higher standard, do this.
I don't really think less of these people, or anything. It's kind of annoying, but unrest in the Middle East and the lack of anything good on cable and the fact that no one cares about making an operating system better than Windows are all far more annoying to me.
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but they have
Date: 2003-01-05 10:40 pm (UTC)Re: but they have
Date: 2003-01-06 05:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-06 09:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-06 06:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-06 10:57 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-01-06 11:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-06 01:42 pm (UTC)By the way, "a" sounds better than "an" in this case because the rule isn't quite as simple as "words that start with vowels get 'an'." It's actually "words that start with a vowel sound"...which means you say "an honor" and "a usually"; "honor" starts with an o-sound, and "usually" with a y-sound.
All this worrying about articles sounds ridiculous to me until I remember how much more trouble German articles give me, and then I'll never complain about English again.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-06 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-07 06:51 am (UTC)(And being able to articulate rules of grammar isn't really a sexy thing to do anyway. You're not missing much.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-01-06 11:06 am (UTC)