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the new girl · Post by **the new girl** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:50 pm

Oh no! It's the grammar police :) I guess I didn't learn anything in Catholic school (or it's all been repressed...).

An aside--the NYT could be run by a union of chimpanzees and it'd still be light years ahead of my other Sunday morning reading option (the Albuquerque Journal: "Your college newspaper with slightly more content and none of the bothersome editing!").

heather · Post by **heather** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 6:21 pm

sean wrote:
PS
no one loves heather and forrest the way I love them.

I know.. and that's why my mom has to be in the room when you come visit.

chelsea · Post by **chelsea** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:01 pm

sean wrote:sorry to be a little bitch, but the apostrophe is incorrect. an apostrophe is never used to make something plural, unless it's an abbreviation or an acronym, and even then, it's a bad idea. The Ney York Times does it with decades, but the New York Times is run by fools and charlatans. The only time it's ok is when you're writing about a letter of the alphabet in the plural and not using an apostrophe would make your sentence confusing, as in "the word albatross has two As." It would be better to write "two A's."

i will now go and remove the enormous stick from my azz.

love,
sean

PS
no one loves heather and forrest the way I love them.

ahhhhh. apostrophe lessons for everyone! i LOVE you.

p.s. i knew i was right.

LoveSickJerk · Post by **LoveSickJerk** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:10 am

chelsea wrote:p.s. i knew i was right.

All I knew was that the "y" didn't get changed. I swear I had no prior knowledge of the apostrophe. Though, current survailiance says it has weapons of mass destruction.

Post by **grant** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:42 am

sean wrote:sorry to be a little bitch, but the apostrophe is incorrect. an apostrophe is never used to make something plural, unless it's an abbreviation or an acronym, and even then, it's a bad idea. The Ney York Times does it with decades, but the New York Times is run by fools and charlatans. The only time it's ok is when you're writing about a letter of the alphabet in the plural and not using an apostrophe would make your sentence confusing, as in "the word albatross has two As." It would be better to write "two A's."

i will now go and remove the enormous stick from my azz.

You know, I had that thought as well, and I even looked it up -- apparently, according to some (who may be, as you say and as I suspect, charlatans) the apostrophe is allowable when describing something as a word or title. Where was that thing... here it is.

Now, "Hail Mary's" *seems* wrong to me when I look at it, but that rule also seems plausible, at least. It does say "some authorities do not recognize this rule." The question would be whether a "Hail Mary" would count as a single word referring to itself or not.

Bah -- for clarity, yes, never mind, kill the apostrophe.

chelsea · Post by **chelsea** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:45 am

grant wrote:kill the apostrophe.

if i ever have a band, i will name it that. kill the apostrophe.

Post by **grant** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:47 am

It is, as Frank Zappa reminds us, the crux of the biscuit.

LoveSickJerk · Post by **LoveSickJerk** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:24 am

grant wrote:Now, "Hail Mary's" *seems* wrong to me when I look at it, but that rule also seems plausible, at least. It does say "some authorities do not recognize this rule." The question would be whether a "Hail Mary" would count as a single word referring to itself or not.

That was my logic (obviously) on the issue of more than one "Hail Mary". I think it is an ugly pluralization at any rate, and always sounds as awkward as it looks. Way to go Catholocism.

Post by **grant** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:31 am

For that, say 10 "Our Fathers".

"Our Father's"

"Our Father"s

....great, now they all look wrong.

Satan, thy name is apostrophe!

Post by **Liesbeth** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:32 am

in Dutch, we use apostrophes for plurals of pretty much everything ending with a vowel, so I'm not gonna enter this discussion

but can I just say that this whole apostrophe catastrophe would be quite unnecessary if we could just stick to one Hail Mary at a time, which is enough, I'd say

Yarn · Post by **Yarn** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:18 pm

I so <3 the apostrophe.

c-dog · Post by **c-dog** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:28 pm

grant wrote:
Satan, thy name is apostrophe!

If Satan were a punctuation mark, I prefer to believe that he/she would be a semi-colon. It even looks slightly devilish --> ;

LoveSickJerk · Post by **LoveSickJerk** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:39 am

How dare you insult the mighty Semi-Colon like that! If anything, the Semi-Colon is the most pious of all punctuation!

c-dog · Post by **c-dog** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 7:56 am

LoveSickJerk wrote:How dare you insult the mighty Semi-Colon like that! If anything, the Semi-Colon is the most pious of all punctuation!

I am interested to read your justification of the above claim....

LoveSickJerk · Post by **LoveSickJerk** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 8:40 am

That's easy: how can three punctuations work as one? In the semi-colon! Period, Colon, Comma, the semi-colon has it all! Shrouded in mystery, it combines and separates! How often do you catch someone correctly using the blasted thing? It voted for Nader the first time, and was saddened by Howard Dean's scream! It laughed at celebrities in "Team America: World Police"! What more do you need? The semi-colon is so cool, it has a clothing line called: ";". Represent!

Besides, the most satanic of all symbols is the anpersand.

c-dog · Post by **c-dog** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:28 am

LoveSickJerk wrote: How often do you catch someone correctly using the blasted thing?

Exactly!! Just like Satan tries to entice us into his evil ways - so does the semi-colon. Claiming to be the punctuation mark to end all punctuation marks - yet it is misused so frequently! There he sits, improperly connecting a dependent clause to an independent clause, laughing a devilish little laugh.

And if you are a right-wing conservative, here is the real proof that the semi-colon is evil.

LoveSickJerk wrote: Besides, the most satanic of all symbols is the anpersand.

Now I have to heartily disagree with this claim - the ampersand is a beautiful mark of punctuation. It is in some cases a work of art even. As pointed out in the McSweeney's Reccomends section recently - take a look at the italicized Garamond ampersand - make sure to make the font very large so you can fully take in its beauty.

Also the word ampersand is so deftly used in the song "I Don't Believe You" by the Magnetic Fields.

"So your brilliant gorgeous and ampersand after ampersand..."

LoveSickJerk · Post by **LoveSickJerk** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 7:10 am

c-dog wrote:
LoveSickJerk wrote: How often do you catch someone correctly using the blasted thing?

Exactly!! Just like Satan tries to entice us into his evil ways - so does the semi-colon. Claiming to be the punctuation mark to end all punctuation marks - yet it is misused so frequently! There he sits, improperly connecting a dependent clause to an independent clause, laughing a devilish little laugh.

I think its more the user's fault, and, as we have seen, Holy Causes have used Holy things to do the most dastardly of deeds. Why wouldn't a punctuation so good, be so misunderstood and misapplied?
I must merely paraphrase with two words about inanity: fundamental christianity.

As for the rest, I rescind my anpersand comment.

c-dog · Post by **c-dog** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 7:48 am

LoveSickJerk wrote:I must merely paraphrase with two words about inanity: fundamental christianity.

So true.

If you want some intersting reading material about fundamental Christianity, I recommend Rev. John Shelby Spong - he is a retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church and wrote "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" - which is a good read regardless of your level of faith.

Post by **grant** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 2:27 pm

Knows how to use semi-colons, too.