HUZZAH! Banned from Rentech.com!

[SimsHost]

I think what confuses people is that the 's can be both possessive and a contraction of the word "is."

And, whilst we are peeving, (according to Strunk & White, but not according to mind-bogglingly illiterate New York Times Manual of Style), you should always use the apostrophe when forming the plural of numerals, letters, initializations, and capitalized acroynms.

Wrong: 747s; As, Bs, and Cs
Right: 747's A's, B's, and C's; or even a's, b's, and c's.

So mind your p's and q's and apostrophes, too!

[ZephyrZodiac]

That explains a lot of wrongly-used apostrophes, then!

[SimsHost]

Heh... sorry, but is also my way of saying ta to either gender. 

Ouch!  Ouch!  Ouch!  You just hit my biggest peeve with illiteracy in The Sims 2.  I can almost forgive Maxis for abuse of words like "mooch" and "parquet" and even "lobster thermidor," chalking it up to leading sheltered lives surrounded by bits and bytes; but their abuse of the word "gender" is beyond the pale.

People have sex; words have gender.

Your "gender preference" would refer to whether you like to use, or be addressed by, the masculine or feminine forms of pronouns.  

You "sexual preference" would indicate whether you like romantic interactions with males or females.

So you would say "...also my way of saying ta to either sex."  That is, of course, unless you talk to words; in which case we have more serious problems to deal with than Maxian illiteracy.

[SimsHost]

That explains a lot of wrongly-used apostrophes, then!

Yup!  I thought of "747's" because there was a time long ago when the editor of the Boeing News was in a tizzy because we were working on a derivative called the 747S, and she didn't know how to make a plural of it.  She showed me a copy of the accursed New York Times Manual of Style.

Suppressing my mirth as best I could, I gritted my teeth and gave her a copy of Strunk & White.

It didn't help.  You can lead a horse to water, but it really helps if you're talking to the right end of the horse!

[ZephyrZodiac]

So how did you make a plural of 747S?  747Ss?

[SimsHost]

747S's.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sorry, but you don't use an apostrophe for plurals!

[SimsHost]

Sorry, but you don't use an apostrophe for plurals!

See my note dated today at 05:36:18 PM.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sorry, but I disagree with your interpretation!  An apostrophe shows either possession or missing letters.  In the word books, for example, meaning more than one book, this indicates neither possession or a missing letter.

[Brynne]

My first major was Journalism, and the text book for one class was Strunk & White. I'd already read it in high school. For pleasure! I'm a dork.

[gali]

747S's.

747S's.

Sorry, but you don't use an apostrophe for plurals!

I remember that I was taught in my English lessons that you put the apostrophe for single before the s - 747's seats (for instance), and for plural - after the s:  747s' seats.
Parent's favorite food (single) - my mom or dad
Parents' favorite food (plural) - my both parents

Was I taught right?

[ZephyrZodiac]

That seems correct to me!

[RainbowTigress]

I was an avid reader as a child, and so I learned a lot of words but not the pronunciation of them.  So I was at grade school, and we were going to the gym for some kind of awards ceremony, and we were told to each take our chairs with us.  My teacher told some of us to leave a space between the chairs, and noticing the pattern with the other chairs in front of us, I asked my teacher, "Oh, is this going to be the Aye-zul?"  She cracked up laughing and I couldn't understand why until she told me that aisle was pronounced "I-uhl".  I was so embarrassed!

[ZephyrZodiac]

I had a similar problem, I was reading books like Lorna Doone and The Mill on the Floss by the time I was 9, and obviously came across hundreds of words I'd never heard used (too many to remember even one example)!  In most languages a child of that age would know enough phonetics to pronounce the word correctly, but quite often an English speaking child will use their phonetic knowledge correctly, but if the word is not pronounced phonetically, it doesn't help!  However, the very same word that you can't pronounce, you often work out the meaning for, as you obviously did with "aisle"!

[Inge]

I was most put out when my mother tactfully corrected my prononciation of "bargain".  I had been thinking it was "barjain" and it used to put my teeth on edge using the hard g in that word.  I was only about 8 or 9

[ZephyrZodiac]

Sounds like you used to like reading labels and adverts, things like that!

[Inge]

Well it keeps me quiet - look, I only lost one pair of lips up till now

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well,I've lost three!  JM must have a freezer full by now!  Hope the FBI doesn't get wind of it!!!!!

[Brynne]

My mom is fond of the word "discombobulate" (I didn't check to see if the spelling is correct there, but phonetically, that's how it sounds), only she thought it was discomBOOBulate. She passed that on to me, and I got laughed at by my friends in college for a.)using an unnecessarily big word and b.) pronouncing it wrong.

[Bane~Child]

She showed me a copy of the accursed New York Times Manual of Style.

Was this in the heading of the article?  I think with a word this awkward, the author/jounalist should have used an alternative like the 747S prototype or model, or something of this nature.

My eldest daughter has a degree in Journalism and they were not taught using the NY Times style, I think they used the AP style.  I remember she too cringed at mention of the accursed NYT style.   In the AP style, they don't allow the use of dashes in between words like, well-to-do.  Does this make it a phrase then and not a word?  They only use them to separate syllables at the end of a line or with a number sequence, as in the strictest sense of a dash.  This naturally causes conflicts on a professional level, as the older guys, usually the editors, have a difference of opinion based on their old school methods.  Even if this is warranted in professional copy, personally I prefer the use of dashes when grouping words into familiar phrases.

Then there is the comma.  When I was learning grammar it was used to separate independent thoughts, natural pauses in a sentence or where you wanted a pause to appear for emphasis within a sentence.  It was used before and after dates, proper names and place names.  Now this all seems wrong, too.  In this method you can end up with easily, 5 or 6 commas in just a short sentence.  When I write this way, without the extra commas, some how it just feels wrong and it can lead to an entirely different interpretation. 

[Bane~Child]

Heh, well, in my line of work, things get even shorter. To express a need, one simply indicates the lack of the needed object: For example, "NO BULLETS!". This can be further abbreviated to simply "BULLETS!" if it is apparent that you don't have any.

Hmmm... simply "BULLETS" might be miscontrued as "INCOMING!"  Try "NEED AMMO!" instead.

I don't think someone yelling "Bullets" would be misconstrued like this unless they were non-military personnel.  Ninnies would likely yell this during an attack because of their relative inexperience with being under fire and not knowing from which side the 'hurty' things were coming.  Yelling "Bullets" to another soldier in the field would be entirely appropriate as meaning, "Someone pass me some, like right now!".  Yelling "Ammo" would be interpreted as meaning "Now is everyone well-equipped with Ammo?...If not you will Need Ammo out there."

 

[laeshanin]

Ouch!  Ouch!  Ouch!  You just hit my biggest peeve with illiteracy in The Sims 2.  I can almost forgive Maxis for abuse of words like "mooch" and "parquet" and even "lobster thermidor," chalking it up to leading sheltered lives surrounded by bits and bytes; but their abuse of the word "gender" is beyond the pale.

People have sex; words have gender.

Your "gender preference" would refer to whether you like to use, or be addressed by, the masculine or feminine forms of pronouns.  

You "sexual preference" would indicate whether you like romantic interactions with males or females.

So you would say "...also my way of saying ta to either sex."  That is, of course, unless you talk to words; in which case we have more serious problems to deal with than Maxian illiteracy.

Hmmm, interesting, but I was taught that "gender" is preferred when speaking to people as their sex is merely a biological issue. Perhaps my head is too full of political correctness and I need a slap to get rid of the shite?

Anyway, a friend has just had her book rejected by an American publisher, and one of the reasons they gave (feedback very unusual has to be said) was that she needs to use American punctuation. What? Could someone enlighten me as to what the difference is between American and British punctuation as obviously we are divided by more than a stretch of water. 

[RainbowTigress]

I read on a British-American dictionary website that the British do not put a period after titles such as Mr. and Mrs. as Americans do.  I was reading a book that was British once, and I thought it was a misprint because there were no periods after those titles.  Perhaps there are other things as well.

[Renatus]

Hmmm, interesting, but I was taught that "gender" is preferred when speaking to people as their sex is merely a biological issue. Perhaps my head is too full of political correctness and I need a slap to get rid of the shite?

Sortakinda. Gender is a cultural construction of social rules of how one should act based on one's sex; it definitely does apply to people, even though it is not fixed and the expectations change from culture to culture. There are many people now who have chosen a gender that does not match the biological sex, and those who have rejected it outright. </anthropology lesson>

[laeshanin]

I read on a British-American dictionary website that the British do not put a period after titles such as Mr. and Mrs. as Americans do.  I was reading a book that was British once, and I thought it was a misprint because there were no periods after those titles.  Perhaps there are other things as well.

We do place a full stop after titles as they are a contraction, so still not clear what's going on there. Enlightenment is really needed, please.

Thanks, Renatus, for lesson in Anthropology (which I will be pleased to listen to at any time, by the by), as it does kinda make why I was taught "gender" as opposed to "sex" clear/er... Thank all that's good I don't need to write an essay on it again.