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Spellin' and gramma

That seems more common in British English.

"The shop is in the High Street"
vs
"The store is on the main street"

Though I think "in Staten Island" makes sense as Staten Island is a borough. By comparison saying "I live in Rhode Island".
 
Thoughts on grammar...

CDL: Interesting points-for some reason in Rhode Island does not sound so bad. Staten Island is an either/or proposition.

Speaking of Rhode Island the smallest state in the US has the longest official name...
The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

Try that one for size! LI MIKE
 
BuildTO said:
1) The one I keep noticing recently - sometimes it seems to come up in almost every thread - is the mistaken use of an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun "its". (For many people, this is not a confusion with the contraction of "it is" = "it's", but a confusion with the possessive apostrophe.) While English uses an apostrophe to mark possession (e.g., the dog's tail), possessive pronouns (ours, yours, theirs, hers, its) do not use an apostrophe.
Click to expand...

Improper apostrophe usage is one of my biggest pet peeves too, and I'm seeing it more and more often, in everything from internet forum messages to advertisements. People always seem to want to use an apostrophe for plurals - not just for things like "DVD's" or other abbreviations, but for completely regular words like "apple's" or "computer's" or whatever. Decades and centuries (i.e. the 90s, the 1800s, etc.) don't require an apostrophe either. I also frequently see apostrophes in third-person conjugated verbs, as in "Future Shop welcome's you to our new flagship location" or something like that.
Apostrophes are used to form contractions and to denote possessives (except pronouns). It's not that complicated.
 
'Unchanging' vs Sliding Standards

I don't know if you are aware of this, but there are two distinct approaches to what is proper and what is not between the English and the Americans.

Typically, the English believe in an unmoving standard (although in reality it moves, only very slowly), however, Americans will accept a sliding standard as long as those establishing that standard still embark on a changing course inspite of it. This touches on such things as definitions, pronunciations and even usage.

Canadians have apparently been influenced by both approaches, unknowingly for the most part.
 
Zephyr said:
I don't know if you are aware of this, but there are two distinct approaches to what is proper and what is not between the English and the Americans.

Typically, the English believe in an unmoving standard (although in reality it moves, only very slowly), however, Americans will accept a sliding standard as long as those establishing that standard still embark on a changing course inspite of it. This touches on such things as definitions, pronunciations and even usage.

Canadians have apparently been influenced by both approaches, unknowingly for the most part.
Click to expand...

Can you cite sources or examples?
 
I don't mind apostrophes in "70's" or "80's" if only because it's a nice way to differentiate between letters and numbers...I'll often add them when writing just so the zero cannot be interpreted as an 'oh' so this practice probably bleeds into my typed versions without me realizing it.
 
I believe that '70s and '80s is more accurate.

The apostrophe indicates it is a contraction of the decades that began in 1970 and 1980. If the apostrophe was thus: 70's and 80's it would indicate the possessive, which makes no sense.
 
Although not literally correct, I think common usage makes the possessive apostrophe work in some manner because it's the decade (and whatever happened during that time) belonging to the 70's.

It's sort of a '70s thing.
 
Urban Shocker said:
I believe that '70s and '80s is more accurate.

The apostrophe indicates it is a contraction of the decades that began in 1970 and 1980. If the apostrophe was thus: 70's and 80's it would indicate the possessive, which makes no sense.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but sense is less important than effective communication. If a majority of people like and use 70's, they're not wrong and the language laws should change.
 
If the logic of '70s and '80s doesn't communicate the idea effectively, why pander to these people with a sense-less alternative?
 
Help me with this one...

"Have you seen how fat Jim's son's cat is?"

Do you put an apostrophe in Jim, son or both? The son belongs to Jim and the cat belongs to the son so both right? Still, it somehow looks wrong to me.
 
Darkstar416 said:
Help me with this one...

"Have you seen how fat Jim's son's cat is?"

Do you put an apostrophe in Jim, son or both? The son belongs to Jim and the cat belongs to the son so both right? Still, it somehow looks wrong to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, both.
"Have you seen how fat Jim's son's girlfriend's uncle's hairdresser's assistant's travel agent's secret lesbian lover's cat is?" is also fine, technically.
 
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