For no reason other than that it had cropped up as a link in a blog I read I paid the APS my first visit in years a few minutes ago.

On the non-apostrophe half of the message board the top ten topics of discussion are

1. The suggestion that we should say "The Beatles was" rather than "The Beatles were".

2.The (mis)pronunciation of "aitch" as "haitch".

3. "I have a dilemma" vs "I'm in a dilemma".

4. Dear old "fewer/less".

5 Whether the plural of "bus" should have a double-s or not.

6. Whether to use formal sign-offs in informal emails.

7. "Optimal" vs "optimum".

8. Why "for free" is an abomination.

9. Whether "I like to play" is better than "I like playing"

10. Why it drives one of the posters crazy to hear "I feel good" instead of "I feel well".

Glad to see they still occupy their time with the old array of non-questions. I suppose it keeps them off the streets.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

I had never visited the site, or at least I have blocked the memory if I did. I could only make it through two posts before the very nature of their pompous assery became unbearable, and I closed the tab.

Fighting the good fight against idiocy.... This is from a story on the Huffington Post....

These are actual complaints received from dissatisfied customers by Thomas Cook Vacations (based on a Thomas Cook/ABTA survey):

1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

2. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."

3. "On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."

5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."

6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."

7. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."

8. "No one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."

9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."

10. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."

12. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."

13. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."

14. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort'. We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."

15. "There were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."

16. "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."

17. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

18. "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."

19. "My fiance and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

quote:

5 Whether the plural of "bus" should have a double-s or not.

Silly them! The plural of "bus is "bice."

quote:

"We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

Definitely sounds like Americans. Wow, proof, those were funny!

As for APS, if I am correct, we at WC are grateful for its existence because when we started WC an influx from APS joined us. However, I agree z that it seems a bit stuffy over there. One question was this: "Our focus is on reducing our emissions intensity." The responses indicated that, indeed, it shouldn't have an apostrophe, but there was too much about what is "actually correct." Here's what the big kahuna finally said, which I thought might interest you, z, since he mentions technical writing:

quote:

As Dave posts, emissions is normally a noun but is used as an adjective in this case. It qualifies the noun, intensity.
This happens a lot, especially in technical writing, where you get a series of nouns.
For instance, passenger door window winder mechanism. Lots of possessives but no apostrophes required.

quote:

As Dave posts, emissions is normally a noun but is used as an adjective in this case. It qualifies the noun, intensity.
This happens a lot, especially in technical writing, where you get a series of nouns.
For instance, passenger door window winder mechanism. Lots of possessives but no apostrophes required.

I don't think any of the bolded words could fairly be described as being "(a noun) used as an adjective" - at least not in a modern descriptive senese.

They are noun phrases and they could be described as compound nouns but is he really suggesting that the meaning of the complex one is actually a string of possessives? That it could (though he doesn't suggest should) be written as "passenger's door's window's winder's mechanism"?

He says "lots of possessives". I don't see any - just a quite complicated compound noun.

Does he think that "flower" in "flower pot" is some kind of adjective? Some kind of possessive?
Should it be (in his mind) "flower's pot" or perhaps "flowers' pot" depending on how many flowers you have in it.

It all strikes me as rather muddled thinking.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

I wondered about the string of possessives, too. That absolutely didn't make sense to me.

There was a murder trial here in Chicago, and they quoted the accused as saying he saw some "ho's" and decided to rob them.

I have to admit, I started looking for what the hos possessed, with the apostrophe and all. Of course, I can understand an apostrophe being used there because hos looks odd. Yet, it was a little confusing for me at first.

I've always spelled the AAVE pronunciation of whores as 'ho'es.

I think that the nominal compounds truck driver and babysitter consist of two nouns, one modifying the other, and not a noun masquerading as an adjective qualifying another plain old noun. (These things have been studied in depth before by people called linguists.)

Are multiple Italian linguists called "linguini?"

Agreed, z. I was surprised to find the so-called "gurus" on that APS site to be so naive about language.