Comments on: Four Horsemen of the Apostrophe

By: bunchkel

bunchkel — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:46:57 +0000

Ugh! 1900′s!?!?!? From the NYT? I expect better…if everyone does the something but it’s (apostrophe) wrong, it doesn’t make it right just because everyone is doing it. Drives me crazy…(and that ellipse … is always THREE dots, never more or less…)

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:29:54 +0000

I’m right there with you, Jennifer. Nothing drives me crazier than the misuse of punctuation. Or there, their, and they’re. My dad has a penchant for putting quotation marks around “everything.” Drives me bonkers.

By: Lori

Lori — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:19:57 +0000

I did not know yesterday was National Punctuation day. Makes me want to go and read “Eats, shoots and Leaves” again. I loved that book, because I tend to get a tad obsessive myself.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:25:21 +0000

Right on, sister(s)! Among so many of those things that irk me (and, of course, what irks ME should guide the rest of the world) is that its-it’s thing. Bad enough when you see it in transitional, impermanent writing, but just the other day I saw it carved (literally) in the legend at the base of a statue.

BTW, Blonde One, amongst all the verbiage in a wonderfully written column, your introductory comment (“The four horsemen of the Apostrophe”)is the best line of all.

[And note there is no hyphen between "wonderfully" and "written," above, because for some previously ordained reason (who MAKES these rules?), adverbs ending in "ly" don't merit the hyphen. Go figure.]

Gale, if you’re looking for more NYT slippage, check out how they — consistently and incorrectly — now use “none” as a plural, not a singular (“None of the comments on Jennifer’s writing were sane.”). I’m afraid I, too, need to get over it and perhaps I’ve lost that one — and maybe, just maybe, I’ll succumb soon on “none.”

But on “its” vs “it’s”? Never.

Ed-it

By: Gale

Gale — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:02:25 +0000

I won’t cave! My mother was a journalist and I have a permanent bee in my bonnet about grammar. My most hated offenses: bring vs. take, lie vs. lay, hanging prepositions, and, of course, the overused apostrophe.

I confess, though, that probably no one cares about my grammatic perfection. There are certainly bigger issues to address in this life. If the NYT can get over it, perhaps I should too?