Apostrophe Abuse

Does it bug ANYONE else how the apostrophe is abused not just on Ciao and Dooyoo, but in books, ads and newspapers?

How hard is it for people to remember that its is possessive and it's is 'it is'?

Even a book I was reading earlier today (ok, it's an episode guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but that's besides the point - it just proves what an anorak I am) used it's for the possessive. Now, I've done it myself on occasion, but as a typo, rather than because I didn't know better).

Or am I just anal? Does it not really matter, since it is nevertheless understood what is meant, so that such trivial errors are irrelevant?

Is there a feeling that if something cannot be accurately used by everyone, it should therefore be ignored when it is misused (I'm thinking of the English language here)?

"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care."
- William Safire

Which Buffy ep guide was it? Cos I have a feeling a mate wrote one and he drinks at the Fitzroy. You could have a go at him next time we mosey on over.

I'm big on correct use of apostrophes. It's not the biggest ask to get them right, but to be fair Ciao is just one of a billion places that abuses the poor little blighters.

Well if you're anal then so am I!

Punctuation is a bug bear on sites such as Ciao and Dooyoo, and yes even in publications...but what can we do?

I find it very frustrating that my children will all in likelihood grow up and be able to speak in "text speak" rather than using proper English.

The Complete Slayer by Keith Topping. I have a Stargate guide by the same author - in general, I enjoy his stuff, though he does love referring to himself as 'this author', and he can't use apostrophes

I wish he'd do a complete(r) Stargate guide, though - the one I have only goes partway through Season 6.


Back on topic - like I said, the odd error is excusable, since we're all human. It's just the wholesale abuse of the English language everywhere that gets me, and the idea that it's somehow 'ok', and that we shouldn't mind.

Poor grammar (and spelling) does seem to be endemic. When I was at school we were taught all the various rules and would have marks knock-off if our essays weren't up to scratch grammar/spelling wise.

The other day I proof-read an assignment my son had just got back from his teacher (marked) and I was amazed that the teacher hadn't picked up on any of the spelling errors or even ensured that all the sentances made sense. I'd never have got away with any more than one error in the whole piece of work.

I also have a yearning towards proper grammar, but that said the whole "its" and "it's" are things that sometimes really confuse me. I do know how to use "were" and "we're" for example, but some of these apostrophes (a new word for me) go a little here and there.

My poor excuse is that I'm Finnish, and my written English can be a little off at times, since I don't use it as my basic writing and speaking language.

Also I'm terrible at decyphering different levels of school like elementary school, high school, college etc. since I don't really know where the lines go. I got them here as Grades 1-6 ala-aste, Grades 7-9 yläaste, after that lukio (maybe 2-4 years) or ammattikoulu, then yliopisto.

But back on topic, I doubt I'll ever get those things completely sorted. I'm trying Okay!

'Its' and 'It's' has never been a problem for me, nor has 'there' and 'their' (now that REALLY gets my goat when people get it wrong). My own blind spot, randomly is 'whose' and 'who's' - I get it right, but I do have to stop and think.

And that's all that's required really. Stop and think.

And you may have proofread it, but you still call it an 'assignment'. Rather than coursework or homework or essay. Stop watching Neighbours.

OK - quick guide (oh, and your English is WAY better than many folks' on Ciao/dooyoo...and dare I say it, on various message sites as well):

ITS - that's possessive. If something (say a name) belongs to an object (say a website) then that is its name. If I want to say that the website in question IS something, that would be it's. So it's (it is) blue (i.e. 'the website is blue').

Some people get not only we're and were mixed up, but also mix those two up with where.

It takes just a few moments and a modicum of thought to get it right, and it makes it so much easier to read when it is (it's) right.

Educational Systems
Rough guide - in the UK (specifically England - I think it's a little different in Scotland:

Infant School - Reception (Kindergarden) is often a half day, that's for 'rising fives' (children who will turn five in the school year - the dates for age of entry usually run September 1st - August 31st).
Years 1, 2 are full time, and are at the Infants.

Junior School - Years 3-6 - you'll be 10 but turn 11 in your final year of Junior School.

In the old days, you'd then start numbering again at senior school, starting at 11 rising 12. Nowdays, the numbering continues.

So Senior School starts at year 7, and continues through year 11 (during which the child should turn 16). Here you'll take (in England, anyway) GCSEs - exams in a bunch of subjects. From here you have several choices - you can go on to do A Levels (which, if you are doing so in the same school that you did your GCSEs in, you'll find yourself perversely in the 6th form - this is a holdover from when the numbering restarted at senior school).

You can do your A levels in a college or a school (see above). You can also get various vocational and other qualifications (including 'modern Apprenticeships'). If you go on to do A levels, you may well decide to go to university at age 18. You can also just leave school at 16 with no further qualifications.

In the United States, they generally start school a year later - so whilst the names of the grades (years) are similar, you'll start Kindergarten (as opposed to Reception) at five rising six. You'll then attend elementary school right through 5th or 6th grade (different school systems have different cut off points - when I was going to school, we went from elementary school in 6th grade to Junior High in 7th - the fashion now seems to be for a middle school running from grades 5 to .

You'll usually start High School roundabout 9th grade (so you'd be around 14) - though again, different parts of the country do it differently. You normally finish high school in 12th grade in the year you turn 18. From there, you might go to college, university, or work.

Alles Klar?

sirg0508 wrote:

Anyway back to Apostrophe's -

D

GUFFAW! Apostrophe's what? Apostrophe's house? Apostrophe's use? The word, I think you were looking for, is...apostrophes.

Sorry - but that was too funny.

Back to regular programming.

Heh, thanks for the enlightening read.

Seems I have had it way easier. I was in school 10 years beginning at around age 6 (1-6 freely translated as lower-grade, 7-9 higher-grade and the tenth was an extra I did to raise my grades, stupid me) after which I went into a vocational institution (or college as it changed over the time I was there). I spent 2 years there learning to become a graphics designer, and that's about it.

Now I'm working as a Computer Assisted Graphics Designer.

Sing0508 wrote:

Age 17 = 5th Year optional at High School
Age 18 = 6th Year optional at High School but you must complete these two years to be able to get into University..

A lot of may mates went to Uni after the end of 5th year. I had the grades required but decided to stay on another year for the hell of it.

Personally I don't have any problem with remembering where an apostrophe
should be placed, but I do know people that do have problems with it for all
sorts of reasons.

I have a son who is dyslexic and putting an apostrophe in the right place
is the least of his worries, so I think we have to keep a sense of proportion
about the subject. Yes, it can be a little aggravating, but we need to keep
a sense of proportion.

There are many reviews on Ciao which are very poorly written but, unless
you screen people joining the site for literacy, it is not something that will
be easily remedied.

Ok. Well, I'm going to be the odd one out.

Apostrophe abuse doesn't particularly annoy me. I momentarily think, "Fickie," and move on. Apostrophe abuse combined with "their" for "there", "i" for "I" and "u" for "you" cause me to have to break with the flow of my reading and thus hamper the amount of information I'm able to take in from that particular text. It doesn't annoy me, but it does make me stop reading as I think the effort to make writing immediately intelligible should come from the writer, not the reader. In the case of an opinion site, I'd rate down.

However...

... by the same token, I find a surfeit of punctuation and in particular a surfeit of formatting even more tiresome and effortful to read. Endless bells and whistles added to a text hamper communication in exactly the same way as they cause the reader to break flow. Thank heavens one can't format on Dooyoo and Ciao. It was my major problem with Epinions. Over decoration of text (outside of headings and titles) is just as bad. Even worse, it's generally done by those who snot all over the poor saps who don't understand apostrophes.

For example (sorry Kate!) I find Kate's posts a real pain in the arse to read. Every other word's either highlighted, or turned into italics, or bolded or something. It drives me round the bend. Sorry Kate! If you can't trust your (not Kate, generic your) sentence construction to make your emphasis for you (not Kate, generic you), rethink your (not Kate, generic you) sentence structure.

All this formatting everything to death is like the ubiquitous mooning Bart Simpson gif on all those homepages. An internet crime against the English language.

So there!

Heh. No offence taken. I can take the criticism, and I can see your point. However, there are times when formatting is useful, not so much for emphasis (I fall into that trap) but for clarity (like when using the word "it's" as demonstration - to distinguish the word I'm demonstrating from the words in the sentence).

Also, I use italics for book and movie titles, because that's what I was taught.

But I do like the odd tilde ~~~

Another pet peeve - 'very unique' (or 'somewhat unique' or any qualification of unique)...

There was a bloke who tried to sell us Protectacoat (or something like that) who kept doing that - I wanted to strangle him!

..

Should have been it's all three times, as you've abbreviated "it is" each time.

Yes it was easy enough to work out what you meant, but it isn't always that simple and the apostrophe can completely change the meaning of a sentence.

It isn't abuse, surely it's the same as spelling something wrong? The 'spelling rule' is there and if the apostrophe is in the wrong place the word means something different, in the same way as when their/there here/hear are used wrongly.

I don't think anybody should have to work out what a writer means, it's the writer who is meant to be telling the reader something and it's they who should do the hard work. Of course there are exceptions and some people find spelling correctly very difficult to do, but when putting something on a website it should be easy enough to get another person to proof read.

The time it bugs me most of all is when an apostrophe is used when it shouldn't be such as in:-
potatoe's instead of potatoes
heroe's instead of heroes
and "Christmas tree's for sale" ... enough said!

We've had conversations at home about 'very unique' and 'almost unique'!

I don't think that apostrophes are that drastic to tell you the truth, but it worries me that society today insists in writing in text speak !

..

I can deal with the occasional spelling mistake or apostrophe errors, but hate it when spelling mistakes are actually other words. This happens quite a lot on Ciao - I've just seen one spelt 'isle' instead of 'aisle'

This is a feature of spellcheckers, sadly. Hopefully as word processors evolve to take context into account this will become less of a problem.

I maintain that Ciao members are being rewarded for their writing, whether with cash or with silly points, and so it is not unreasonable to demand that that writing be of the highest standard in terms of accuracy.

Olly_Plimsoll wrote:

This is a feature of spellcheckers, sadly. Hopefully as word processors evolve to take context into account this will become less of a problem.

I maintain that Ciao members are being rewarded for their writing, whether with cash or with silly points, and so it is not unreasonable to demand that that writing be of the highest standard in terms of accuracy.

Yes. Exactly. The standard of English (never mind of reviewing) of some of this month's diamond awarded reviews (for example) is appalling. Typos (excusable to a point), incomplete sentences, childlike sentence construction, bad spelling and capitalisation...and these won DIAMONDS.

It really does make any of us who actually put the effort in to produce literate, readable prose feel sick and unappreciated.

I'm actually looking forward to the day we get some art from textspeak. It will happen. Someone really will write a great poem. And the grammarians can have a windmill to tilt at that's just like Tracy Emin's bed.

Language evolves. Opinions should communicate effectively.

These things are not necessarily incompatible.

Jill Murphy wrote:

Language evolves. Opinions should communicate effectively.

Surely the language used should be appropriate to the medium?

Text-speak for use with mobile phones, not for reviews or extended essays. If people can manage to learn the shortcuts and abbreviations for texting, they could take the time to learn conventional spelling as well, instead of expecting those of us who don't text very much to try to work out what they are writing.

I was making the point that the stick-in-the-mud grammarians on this thread (not you, the die hard traditionalists here) will soon be as out of touch with the accepted methods of communicating effectively as those about whom they're moaning. Language evolves. Try reading personal jottings from every day communications written not just 500 years ago, but less than 100 years ago. You wouldn't make head nor tail of them.

It's now considered acceptable to use abbreviating apostrophes in even fairly formal environments. People are never clients, but always customers. Beginning sentences with words such as 'and' is ok. Saying ok is ok, at least within fairly informal parameters. Dashes are acceptable as they more commonly understood than semi-colons.

In short, I was taking the piss out of them. Rigidity in any sphere is usually a bad thing. Rigidity in sticking to outmoded forms of grammar is a bad thing. Communicating effectively when writing a consumer opinion is a good thing and not incompatible with the evolution of the English language.

See?