Eve, actually 1960’s is fine. It is also correct to write it without the apostrophe. Try reading the Sundad Times with a mimosa and everything will be just fine.
According to the sacred text known as Harbrace:
Us the apostrophe and ss for the plural forms of lowercase letters and of abbreviations followed by periods.
When needed to prevent confusion, the 's is used for the plural of capital letters and of words referred to as words.
Examples cited:
a. too many l’s
b. several A’s
c. two plus’s
d. the ha ha’s
Either 's or s may be used to form such plurals as the following:
a. the 1900’s or the 1900s
b. two B’s or two Bs
c. her and’s or her ands
d. his 7’s or his 7s
e. the &'s or the &s
f. the VFW’s or the VFWs
Originally posted by SHAKES
I don’t think most Dopers shun those who aren’t totally proficient in the language. Sometimes the use of the right punctuation mark makes a sentence more coherent, but most of us aren’t picky. (And most of us make mistakes from time to time. (Even the OP did.) The main rule at SDMB is Don’t be a jerk. That’s a much more important rule.
I used to be an English teacher. You will still find mistakes in what I write. That’s because I choose not to look up every rule I’ve forgotten since I retired fourteen years ago. SDMB is generally very informal.
There are others here who are very careful about what they write. That is their choice. Often they are people who particularly enjoy the language with all of its pecularities.
I generally nitpick the grammar and punctuation of only those who make it an issue. My big red pen is out of ink.
If someone wants to correct me thats fine but if someone wants to belittle me becuase of a few gramatical errors on a board where we’re all just suposed to be having fun anyway. Well they can kiss my white ass.
More than one poster in this thread were quick to call people morons becuase of this. Some even called it quite sad. Well let me tell you people something; my writting skills might be for shit; but I can tear apart some of the most sophisticated electronic equipment known to man (short of N.A.S.A) and put it back together again no problem. This in my opinion is something a moron would be incapable of doing. My bosses seem to agree with this, thats why I’ve managed to dodge several layoffs since I’ve been working for the company that I do now.
So to some it up; chill the fuck out. And if your really stressing over other peoples writting skills… SEEK HELP.
And guess what I’m not even gonna proof read this post. So
Not according to Merriam-Webster, it isn’t. Cite is a verb - the noun form is citation, popular usage on this board notwithstanding. Gaudere is a cruel mistress.
Now obvious (and presumably humerous) typos aside, here we have one of my pet peeves: the use of a semi-colon, where a colon is required. You use a colon to direct attention to an answer, not a semi-colon.
The correct phrase would of course be:
“Well let me tell you people something: my **writing skills might be for shit **but I can tear apart some of the most sophisticated electronic equipment known to man”
The first semi-colon should actually be a colon (to introduce your answer) and the second semi-colon is redundant.
No, don’t thank me. It’s enough to know I’ve brought a little light into your world.
It’s perfectly reasonable and useful to start a thread on this issue. What’s (see what I did there;)) intensely annoying is when posters make uninvited grammar corrections in unrelated threads. A particularly pernicious example of this is the use of “sic” when quoting other board members. If you resort to this when debating, I can only conclude that you’re an idiot.
However, this thread gives free rein to the latent pedant in me…
I’ve probably been wooshed but you’re just wrong;).
MWAP (who has had to hand himself over to the grammar police on more than one occasion).
OK, bear with me, I’m going to do one of those long defense/comment threads that have gotten so popular in the Pit of late.
Close, but no cigar (“whose” was right in context, wasn’t it?).
The sake does indeed belong to the fuck - the phrase is derived from “For God’s sake”, in which there is only one sake, but made profane rather than blashpemous. Though by linking the two, I’ve now made the phrase both profane and blasphemous.
Monty, nice rant - sorry I missed it first time round.
Why thank you ma’am, but I favour The Apostrophe Nazi.
SHAKES: hurrah! I was wondering if someone would be offended by my deliberately non-insulting OP. You didn’t let me down. Thanks! (BTW, some of my best friends can’t use apostrophes.)
Scarlett67, Zoe, shame on you for reintroducing the reason that people get so confused in the first place. That wasn’t the mistake I made (please see the footnote to my OP). Now make a pile of Harbraces and burn them. I think you’ll get a few more pluses in your PhDs if you mind your ps and qs in the '00s.
Certainly: the wages were derived from those six months. Therefore they’re the wages of the months - and thus the months’ wages. (Fowler says this is entirely correct. Time increments “may be treated as possessives and given an apostrophe”.)
Nobody’s found the real error in the OP yet… Hint: it’s factual, not grammatical.
So the rule is: possessive cases take the apostrophe, except for personal pronouns (its, his, hers, etc.)
Oh, except one’s.
And this according to Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
Notice Modern-Usage, not, Historical-Logic.
I believe that historically the possessive apostrophe served exactly the same role as the eliding apostrophe – once upon a time the axe belonging to John would be Johnes axe* (the es possessive form coming from German influences), subsequently the “e” was elided to give the form John’s.
The possessive of one did not require the es ending, so ones did not take an apostrophe. A million spelling mistakes later, we invoke Modern Usage and perversely declare that ones should now properly be spelled one’s.
Bah! and Humbug!
One’s not amused.
and not, as popular belief would have it, John his axe
No, I wasn’t criticizing your use of “whose.” I thought you forgot to separate your dependent clause from your independent with a comma in this sentence:
And before irishbird cringes at my use of “separate,” I can’t find “seperate” in the dictionary!
The wages belong to the months (all six of them), so one might expand the sentence to:
“His severance pay included the wages of six months.”
Therefore the possessive " 's " goes on the end of “months”, but eliding the final s for the sake of pronunciation so you don’t end up sounding like Gollum.
Now make a pile of Harbraces and burn them. I think you’ll get a few more pluses in your PhDs if you mind your ps and qs in the '00s.