Over at the APS someone has posted [URL=http://people.whitman.edu/~hashimiy/apost.htm ]this link[/URL] to a good article about apostrophes. I thought I'd take the liberty of reproducing it here. It's thought provoking stuff and worth a look.
Do Americans actually use this clumsy construction? Brits would use "For conscience's sake she confessed her lie". ----------------------------------------
American's are mo'st likely to u'se apo'strophe's anywhere they find an "S" in a 'sentence, but not where there isn't one.
quote:Do Americans actually use this clumsy construction?
Not the educated ones, arnie. Were this my student's phrase, I'd send it back. By the way, I am reviewing a doctoral dissertation now--phew! She is comma, apostrophe, capital-lettered, etc. challenged! And, she is proposing to receive a PhD from a fairly good institution. My dilemma (yes, I know we've discussed this word before!) is that her scientific work is stellar.
Okay, here is an example of a sentence in that doctoral dissertation proposal referred to above:
"The third semantic problem is the problem under study being identified as tracheal suctioning."
Now, I can tell you from a scientific perspective, "tracheal suctioning" is not a semantic problem. What she evidently is referring to is that it can be accomplished by different methods.
As I have said previously on this board, we in the U.S. need to do a better job of teaching people to write!
quote:Originally posted by haberdasher: I suspect most would express it as _"For the sake of her conscience, she confessed her lie"_ thereby avoiding the controversy altogether.
Of course, the easiest way to avoid the clumsy construction would be to not confess the lie in the first place. This would, sadly enough, probably be the choice of most people in general, not just Americans.
Sidenote: I had originally written "...most people in general, Americans, non-Americans, and others." as an intentional error for humorous effect (what "others"?) but then recalled other disastrous results of my baiting you good people in the past. See? I am trying to improve.
I must be older than you are. You're fretting over the slovenliness of the apostrophe. I still can't get past the sloth implicit in "Hilites. I want it to be Highlights.
Dollars to doughnuts (donut's?) most people don't care any more. More's the pity.
No I care. Before I posted this, I told Shufitz that the ad had two errors. He told me that it is perfectly acceptable to write "hilites". Shuftitz may have been wrong once in his life...but only once! So, I gave up on that aspect. Glad you agree with me, haberdasher!
And, she is proposing to receive a PhD from a fairly good institution. My dilemma (yes, I know we've discussed this word before!) is that her scientific work is stellar.
An ad for a beauty salon: