Vince

I, am' completely, sorry' I, answered' the, initial' question,'.

Andy,


KMRIA :-}


John

"How many cards have four spots? There are four 4's in a deck. The apostrophe here is wrong and it should be 4s. "


THIS is the most irritating mis-use of the apostrophe. For instance, in the medical world, a CBC is an abbreviation for a complete blood count. Well, if you have more than one of these tests to write, it would be "CBCs", NOT "CBC's". It is the mis-use of the apostrophe when pluralizing something that bugs me more than anything else in writing.


"..."Its" is ALWAYS possessive, "it's" ALWAYS means it is. "


Thank you again for pointing this out. This is another mis-used apostrophe situation, though it's not quite as irritating as the mis-used pluralized word.


I see these mistake's (gotcha, did that on purpose!) in ALL KINDS of writing, sometimes even things written by highly edumacated people. C'mon people, I'm not even an english major (I majored in medical technology and biology), but I at least make an effort!


Basically, one of the primary incentives to "get it right" is so that you don't look like a MORON.


Thanks again


Dave in Cali

at any rate, at least there is some attempt to clear it up. The nit-picking details are not so important, it's the mis-use of the pluralized regular everyday useages of the apostrophe that most bug me anyway.

"There are four 4's in a deck. The apostrophe here is wrong and it should be 4s."


I have been making the mistake above"


It's not a mistake. It may be misuse but not a mistake. The reason it is not a mistake is because it is undertsood by 1oo% of the audience what is meant.


vince

O Dave,


One time I saw this lovely sentence: "The student's took their book's to the class's but wont answer the professors question's."


John


BTW, Ph.D.'s is correct, but if the periods are omitted, it should be written PhDs. Strange, huh?

"The student's took their book's to the class's but wont answer the professors question's."


OUCH!!!!


I cringed when I saw that. It made me want to take a bunch of big stick's and go whak a bunch of student's on their head's and the teacher's who never taught them how to use apostrophe's correctly.


Seriously though, it's great to have a forum where we can discuss this kind of thing. I have seen several other forums of various types on the internet, but basically I have difficultly finding any forums where I can find intelligent people to have intelligent conversations with. Thats' why the Vince Forum is such a good thing. Yea, we can talk poker, but we can talk "everything Vince Lepore" too, which encompasses a wide variety of highly important matters which are highly significant and very much applicable to the social fabric of today's society.


Like Chasin' Girls.


Did I get all my apostrophes right that time?


Dave in Cali

"cannot becomes can't, do not becomes don't."


How in the heck do the two words "am" & "not" end up as "ain't"?

Great handle!

Dunno. But it might have something to do with the sound combination. One note: about 150 years ago, "ain't" was a marker of upper class speech.


John