[NTLK] possessives (was Re: NCU & OS X)

From: Tom McDougal (TMcDougal_at_newted.org)
Date: Tue Jan 07 2003 - 10:21:16 EST


On Mon, Jan 6, 2003 Andrew Beals wrote:
> out that the install procedure had entered the name info for me, requiring only the removal of the snake-y excess 's' after the apostrophe.
>
> [Clearly no one in that group had a last name ending in 's'.]

This came up in a recent discussion with friends. We disagreed about the rule so we went to two authorities: Elements of Style (Strunk & White) and A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Garner). The authorities agreed: Form the singular possessive by adding apostrophe-S no matter what the last character is.

You can choose to ignore the rule if you want but Apple did it correctly.

-Tom

-- 
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sun Jan 26 2003 - 04:02:25 EST