Common heretical uses of apostrophes and how to avoid them
Today I am Plain English-reviewing a glossary of curriculum terminology written by a major UK education body. It is full of poor grammar.
For example, the writer uses which where they should use that, but they are so oblivious to their error that they've inserted commas to fool the MS Word grammarcheck. This produces sentences like The part of the ( Read more... )
For example, the writer uses which where they should use that, but they are so oblivious to their error that they've inserted commas to fool the MS Word grammarcheck. This produces sentences like The part of the ( Read more... )
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Interesting - as a non-native speaker I often wondered about this when - there is, of course, some kind of intuition about when to use them (which I hope I somehow managed to adopt more-or-less correctly) but whenever I asked a pro for a clear and simple rule the answer I got was that there isn't one. The best I read on this so far is this.
As for the apostrophes, yeah, that's a pretty stupid mistake to make - I got pretty good instruction on that one and I don't think I ever made a mistake, nor do any of the people I correspond with.
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“That” defines and “which” informs. If the following sentence did not have commas, the information in the “which” clause would form an essential part of the main statement, and “which “ would be replaced with “that”:
The book, which was on the table, was a present.
The book that was on the table was a present. (that is, as opposed to the book on the shelf, which was on loan)
it's actually the commas that make the difference, not whether you use which or that (although a which clause can't start with "that"). my impression is that US usage is much pickier about this than UK - i've seen plenty of examples from British publishers of the "the book which was on the table..." variety. and i have no problem with it myself, but i spend an awful lot of my working life changing it.
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RIGHT - The part of the curriculum that is compulsory for all students is called the national curriculum.
WRONG - The part of the curriculum which is compulsory for all students is called the statutory curriculum.
RIGHT - The national curriculum, which must be taught in all English schools, is often perceived as being overloaded with content.
WRONG - The national curriculum, that must be taught in all English schools, is often perceived as being overloaded with content.
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And while I'm down on teachers, getting up and saying stuff is easy - it's getting anyone to remember and apply what you've said that really matters.
Ah, that reminds me, I have a career change to organise! Nice to see you, anyway...
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The 'explaining complex things so that they appear simple' thing that teachers do is pretty amazing. Rarely, I can do it in writing, but hardly ever when speaking. My poor co-workers who get a task from me, they always look baffled.
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There is something deep-rooted in English that make people want to put apostophes in in these cases, but I'm not grammarian enough to understand why it should be.
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1. only because people are willing to reinforce it by repeating it
2. the only possible outcome of this is the apostrophe rules becoming more inconsistent and confusing, when the point of punctuation is to avoid confusion.
"60's, 70's and 80's" is another example which is probably more common than the correct use.
People tell me they use apostrophes in these cases because if you don't:
- it looks wrong, or
- reads confusingly.
The latter seems to be an effect from the fact that the incorrect use is more common and familiar rather than actual ambiguity. The former is, well, anything looks wrong if you tell yourself it does.
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* I assert, but don't have one to quote.
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