As you’ve noted, Labdad, the respected style books differ. Wherever I’ve worked, we’ve either picked one style book to adhere to at all times or created our own in-house style guide. The use of apostrophes, to me, is an issue that fits under the latter category.
When one speaks a possessive, one already adds an “ess” sound. But writing possessives is, naturally, different. My take is that it’s not good grammar to leave an apostrophe naked - i.e., “Jones’.”
However, the best action one can take in writing is simply to recast the sentence. This way, the whole business with the apostrophe is avoided - especially for proper names like Illinois and Rodriguez. If one can’t recast, then add the apostrophe-ess:
You are my people! I’m also in the biz – a puzzle editor, which is its own subgenre, and a darned peculiar one it is.
My pet peeve (aside from confusing imply and infer) is people who figure the possessive for “it” is “it’s.”
We use Chicago , and I’ll be honest with you – I can never remember the ins and outs of the possessive thing. (Jesus no s, but Hippocrates yes, and then there’s the whole “silent s (x, z)” exception…) so I keep a photocopy of the relevant pages in folder right next to the computer.
BTW – it drives me batshit that I can’t edit posts!
Oh, AP is the king of weirdness when it comes to the possessive apostrophe.
For example, in singular common nouns ending in “s,” you normally form the possessive by adding an apostrophe-s. To wit “The waitress’s table.” However, in the case that the next word starts with “s,” use a single apostrophe. “The waitress’ seat.” I can sorta understand, but still odd.
Then comes an addendum to this rule. If a word that ends with an “s” sound is followed by a word which begins with the letter “s,” also use the simple apostrophe. Hence, “appearance’ sake” and “conscience’ sake,” but “my conscience’s voice.”
Then, of course, there’s proper nouns ending with “s,” and biblical names like “Jesus” and “Moses.” It’s enough to give me a headache.
I must confess I haven’t heard of this. I add the apos-ess whenever possible - it’s our style here, anyway.
For any copy editor, the biggest key of them all is consistency. Here, we have to mollify authors all the time; if they prefer a certain expression that goes against our style, we’ll usually let them do it, provided we’re consistent within their paper.
It’s OK, dan. It’s AP. There’s a lot of weirdness going on in AP style. They still insist on hyphenating “teen-ager,” for instance. Most newspaper stylebooks I’ve seen always go against this rather out-dated spelling. Anyhow, you’d think that with AP style’s fanatical concern over saving space, they’d axe (ahem, “ax” in AP style) the space-guzzling hyphen, but noooo…
And for those not in the bizz, do remember that not only do different types of publications use different style formats, but individual publications do as well. It’s very easy to find two magazines on pretty much the same subject that use slightly differing styles.
Aspecially if they have been around for a while and have gotten into a particular groove (and can get away with it).
What is the appropriate use of “got”? It seems that many times “got” could (should?) be replaced with “have”, and the meaning would not change, e.g., “I got it”, " I have it". But things like “What have you got there?” seem incorrect.
some friends and I had a discussion nad could come to an answer we all agreed on (“on which could all agree”?). Anyway, another friend was going to ask his brother the high school English teacher, but we were too drunk to remember.
In proper English, “got” is a nonstandard word. As you’ve noted, it’s better to substitute “have” as the case warrants. Of course, if you’re playing baseball and there’s a pop fly and you yell out “I got it,” no one’s gonna care about your grammar.
Instead of “What have you got there?” one should say “What do you have there?”; that is, change “have got” to “do have.”
Okay, what’s the official word on prepositions? Is it truly illegal to have them at the end of a sentence? Or is it a leftover “tradition” from…latin, I think it was?
Either way, what level of disgust do you experience when this happens?
Ending a sentence with a preposition: That is something up with which I will not put.
Obviously, there will be many times in which having the preposition at the end of the sentence makes perfect sense. The above parody (and I forget who said it) is such an example, as it contains an idiom.
To answer your question, though, we need to differentiate between speaking and writing. We’re a lot more lax in speaking, and usually this is fine. Writing - especially formal writing - should be more proper than speaking. The key is to make sure your point is understood by the listener or reader. In formal scientific writing, we don’t allow prepositions to end a sentence; but instead of moving it to the middle, we recast (rewrite) the sentence. Makes much more sense. A good copy editor will be able to convey the same meaning, only his or her new sentence will be all pretty-like.
In an effort to coerce his young son to bed, a dedicated father told the boy to go upstairs to his bedroom, promising to follow shortly with a book to read to him in bed. When his father arrived with Junior’s least favorite book, one about Australia, the boy complained, “What did you bring that book I don’t want to be read to from out of about Down Under up for?”
The old superstitition, based on a grammatical fallacy, that no sentence should end with a preposition, is happily dying out. For that matter, most good writers down the ages have ignored it. … As Winston Churchill said, it’s a “pendantry up with which we will not put.”
I heard the Churchill “quote” (I’ve never seen a definitive cite; anyone got one?) as “That is the sort of errant pedantry up with which . . .”
Similarly, “What did you bring that book that I didn’t want to be read to out of from below about Down Under up for?”
A pox on those who wish to do away with the serial comma. It is never wrong to include it (except, of, course, as dictated by a chosen style), but its omission often introduces ambiguity. The classic example is the apocryphal book dedication “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”
