Grammarnazi or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Grocer's Apostrophe

[notintheseheels]

Picture the scene: I'm in my first year at Cambridge, must be quite early on as I'm still trying to fit in rather than disappearing to the pub with RockSoc/GothSoc types, and sitting in a college bar surrounded by students. I didn't feel qualified to join in with most conversations of an academic nature, sure I was too stupid and scared of the

Comments

Succinct alan1957 is succinct...

[alan1957]

Yes.

[lupie_stardust]

This is brilliant :D

[wildeabandon]

Yes, quite.

Personally I get a great deal of pleasure out of narging about grammar and punctuation. I thoroughly enjoyed Truss's book, and an hour arguing about the difference between uninterested and disinterested* is totally my idea of a good time. But I don't think it matters, y'know, anymore than it matters if someone cares about any of my other hopelessly geeky hobbies.

*there has always been strong opinion that one of these means "not interested in" and the other one means "impartial to", but which is which has changed several times over the last few centuries. I find this really quite funny.

[vyvyan]

Mm, Old English nouns were also pluralised with -en (or -es or other things) without apostrophes, because of the common origin with Dutch and German (and other languages, at more distant remove). Apostrophes for omitted letters came in in English in the Early Modern period, but they weren't used as is prescribed now. Indeed I've seen 18th century texts using apostrophes to mark plurals :-)

This is also a roundabout way of saying I completely agree with you, notintheseheels, and that pretty much all academic linguists have agreed with you as well since at least the early twentieth century.

[palmer1984]

I agree obv :).