We know that a few sub editors would love to get hold of Busted Blonde and strangle her for showing the English language such disrespect. We knew that our disregard of the apostrophe irks some of our senior readers and they are not too fond of our bad language either.
But we have decided that we might try and clean up our act a bit after we got a signed copy of Your Joking by Mary Mountier, the lovely wife of the irascible Garry Ward.
It really is a very good, well written mini tome on punctuation.
It was given to us by Spaz, who is a bit of a pedant which is odd because he is an Aussie.
So we are taking the hint. We are going to try and get our apostrophe's right now.
Monday, 31 August 2009
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2 comments:
Perhap's. It's one of tho'se great idea's who'se time ha's come.
My spelling is wobbly and proof reading worse but I think I understand the rules for using apostrophes:
1. If a letter is missing eg can't, isn't.
2. To show possession when it comes after the person/thing who possesses it eg the dog's breakfast (one dog) the dogs' breakfast (two or more dogs).
3. Exception - possessive pronouns it is its and hers not it's and her's (or it's its and hers not . . . ).
4. Apostrophes are not used for plurals eg it's the 80s not the 80's; GPs not GP's; MPs not MP's.
If those plurals possess something then 2 applies - it's one GP's office; two or more GPs' office.
Posted nervously in case I've got it wrong :)
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