I am not an English major. I’m a simple engineer. I pave runways and build hangars for a living. And in my spare time, I love to surf the Dope.
Sometimes I feel it necessary to quote a Doper on either a cite or a quote, and can’t quite figure out just what is grammatically correct. If I quote a Doper and include the possesive ‘apostrophe and “s”’, is that supposed to be bolded too?
i.e.
Tripler’s OP is really a nitnoid question. [Grammatically correct or incorrect?]
versus Tripler’s OP is really a nitnoid question. [See above comment.]
Is it really established? Not that it would thaw out the Cold War or anything, I’m just genuinely curious if there is an actual precedent. . .
You’re in luck – it’s not a question of grammar at all. What is and isn’t bolded (or italicized, or underlined, etc.) is a question of style. And we’ve all got our own styles, right?
If it matters, I’d do it aldiboronti’s way – just bold the username. It follows from similar conventions with other formats:
Moby-Dick’s themes are pretty obvious, even to a non-English major.
Here’s another chiming in that possessives absolutely should not be bolded. YMMV, though. My rage for you doesn’t burn with the fire of a thousand suns.
Wow! The responses, so far, kind of surprised me. I was three-quarters expecting people to say that ‘since the “root” of the possessive is bold, so should be the “trailer”’.
But hey, whatever works . . . works.
Tripler
And Jenny, thank you! It’s good to be back.
Not to hijack your thread, but are you out of harm’s way now?
(Well, as close as America’s freeways and damnfools and etc let you be, anyway)
I guess it’s all relative and certainly as the news of late has shown us you never see the pizza oven that has your name on it, but you’re not getting shot at regularly, right?
Except for posters whose name contain spaces, like Exapno Mapcase’s, it’s easier just to double click on the user name in order to select it, then click the bold button, than it is to select with mouse movement and clicks.
Double clicking on a word will not select the portion after an apostrophe: don’t can’t won’t
I am. Been back for about three weeks now. . . No RPGs, no machine guns, and sure as hell no Patriot Missiles. . . unlsess you count those on the 4th of July as “Patriots”.
Apart from that - in my own handbook on style, the username should only be in **bold ** the first time it occurs in the text, highlighting the fact that a person is mentioned. To continue doing so is annoying.
This from journalism school and how we were told to handle names in text.
Generally - font masturbation should be at a minimum level.
Since it’s a question of style, I’ll go with the assertion of Interrobang!? above. Grammatically, it’s the noun phrase that has the possessive, not the noun per se.
If you can’t decide between bolding the 's or not bolding it, follow my example in this post.
