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Guest
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| Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2005 2:38 am
Post subject: Re: Misplaced Apostrophes |
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| Quote: |
And, more worser still, this morning I saw an eBay listing for a book by
a certain Nigel Evan's.
this remins me that becasue it sounds right, some people don't |
duplicate the 's' at the end of a surname, eg 'this is Evans pencil' ie
the pencil of evans
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Pavel314
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 6:29 pm
Post subject: Re: Misplaced Apostrophes |
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<keithbcook@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1129322293.345192.8350@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: |
And, more worser still, this morning I saw an eBay listing for a book by
a certain Nigel Evan's.
this remins me that becasue it sounds right, some people don't
duplicate the 's' at the end of a surname, eg 'this is Evans pencil' ie
the pencil of evans
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In olden times they taught us that it would be "This is Evans' pencil," the
rule being that for words ending in "s" one put an apostrophe after the
final "s" to indicate possession.
Paul |
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Raymond S. Wise
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:37 am
Post subject: Re: Misplaced Apostrophes |
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Pavel314 wrote:
| Quote: | keithbcook@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1129322293.345192.8350@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
And, more worser still, this morning I saw an eBay listing for a book by
a certain Nigel Evan's.
this remins me that becasue it sounds right, some people don't
duplicate the 's' at the end of a surname, eg 'this is Evans pencil' ie
the pencil of evans
In olden times they taught us that it would be "This is Evans' pencil," the
rule being that for words ending in "s" one put an apostrophe after the
final "s" to indicate possession.
Paul
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This has been much discussed in alt.english.usage and alt.usage.english
.. The rule you cite would more often apply to only a limited set of
names, mostly names of the ancients such as Moses, Jesus, and names of
the ancient Greeks such as Aristophanes, as well as a few fixed
expressions such as "for goodness' sake." More modern names, such as
"Evans," would have been made possessive by adding an apostrophe-"s",
pronounced [s] or, after voiced consonants, liquids, nasals, and
vowels, [z]. So it would have been "This is Evans's pencil" and "This
is Charles's book, with the possessive "s" being pronounced [z] in
these cases.
Nowadays, there are several different sets of rules in play. For
example, in closed-captioned American TV programs, a character might
say "Evanses" for the possessive, but instead of spelling it "Evans's,"
the captioner will very often spell it "Evans'" instead.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
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Daniel James
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 6:13 pm
Post subject: Re: Misplaced Apostrophes |
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In article news:<1129505843.219395.237370@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Raymond S. Wise wrote:
| Quote: | So it would have been "This is Evans's pencil" and "This
is Charles's book, with the possessive "s" being pronounced [z] in
these cases.
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That is certainly what I was taught at school, 40 years ago, in the UK.
[For the OP's benefit:] We were taught that the "s'" ending is only used
when the word being turned into a possessive is a plural.
So:
1. The farmer's land = the land belonging to a farmer.
2. The farmers' land = the land belonging to several farmers.
3. Mr. Farmer's land = the land belonging to someone named Mr. Farmer.
4. Mr. Farmers's land = the land belonging to someone named Mr. Farmers.
The difference between (2) and (4) is that "farmers" in (2) is a plural,
while in (4) it is a singular.
This is still what I do, though I encounter increasing numbers of people
who wrongly [1] believe that form (2) is proper for case (4).
[1] It was wrong when I was at school. It would probably raise few eyebrows
today.
Cheers,
Daniel. |
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