Apostrophe Agitation

May 25, 2018May 17, 2020 ~ Diane Faulkner ~ 1 Comment

I have a friend I absolutely love. He’s Dutch but has been living in the United States for at least forty years. English is about his fifth language. He hates our apostrophe.

When he’s reading English, apostrophes are a distraction to him, especially when a word ends in s.

“You have so many rules!” he says. Well, we really don’t.

Apostrophes basically:

Denote possession
Make s-ending words plural
Show something’s missing

Possession

If a person, place or thing–I’m talking about a regular noun, here–owns something, then the apostrophe s is appropriate:

Zippy’s collar is blue.
Orlando’s traffic is nightmarish.
That shovel’s handle is red.

S-ending Words

If a word is already plural or ends in s, the extra s is not necessary:

Friday is usually guys’ night out.
- Some editors, teachers, professors prefer s’s. Always check the style guide before submitting your assignment.

Missing word parts

When we speak, we naturally squish words together. The letters we aren’t pronouncing are replaced with an apostrophe:

Can’t
- Short for cannot.
The ’60s and ’70s had the best and most complex rock.
- The missing “19” is represented by the apostrophe.

Tricky Bits

Okay, I admit, there are other tricky apostrophes, such as when making compound nouns plural:

My father-in-law’s golf clubs are always in the trunk.
All attorneys-general work for the Attorney-General of Florida.

And when initials are plural:

“I have a ton of CD’s” is as correct as “I have a ton of CDs.” It depends upon the editor’s style.

But overall, those three basic areas are what’s covered by apostrophes.

Read more about apostrophes in The Blue Book of Grammar.

Misuse of Misnomer

January 3, 2018 ~ Diane Faulkner ~ Leave a comment

Oh. My. Word. In one day, I’ve had to correct more than one talking head–possibly by throwing my socks at the television–as said heads tried to impress with their intellect and redress some concept being debated.

“That’s a misnomer,” they’d say and then continue with their debate.

Unless whatever it was they were talking about was named incorrectly, the word they should have been going for is “misconception.”

Misnomer comes from the 15th-century Anglo-French mesnomer, which means “to misname or wrongly name.” See:

mes- “wrongly” + nomer “to name,” from the Latin nominare

Misconception means “a mistaken belief or a wrong idea.”

Misnomer may be more fun to say, but please, don’t say it unless you’re correcting a name. Otherwise, you’ll look like an illiterate fool.

Three Stages of Ability – May, Might, and Can

March 24, 2013March 25, 2013 ~ Diane Faulkner ~ 1 Comment

“You may remember his name.”

Thank you, NBC, for allowing me to remember Hannibal Lecter‘s name. Had the powers-that-be on your mega-broadcasting company’s brilliant marketing team not been so gracious, I would never again be able to recall the fictional serial killer‘s name.

That was my knee-jerk reaction upon hearing the tag-line for the new television series, Hannibal, which is scheduled to air Thursday, April 4th, at 10:00 p.m. EST. “May,” I thought to myself, implies permission is needed to do something. Of course, as quickly as that thought left my mind, my mom’s voice echoed in my head. “I don’t know, can you?” It’s what she unfailingly replied whenever one of us would ask, “Ma, can I (enter standard childhood want)?” That was her way of letting us know we should have asked, “May I?” instead of, “Can I?”

Now, back to the Hannibal trailer. Turns out, “may” was used correctly in this instance. Here’s why:

“May” is a helping verb called a modal. Modals give context to verbs, let the reader or listener in on the attitude or mood of the verb. You would use “may” when you kind of know, but don’t definitely know, the response to a question.

For example, say you’re sweetie wants you to go to a baseball game. You like baseball. The game is on a weekday. You have to work. The day has come to buy tickets. He calls and asks you, “Do you think you’ll be able able to go?” You have just one more thing to do to complete some world-changing project. It’s more likely than not you’ll be able to get away, and you want to do so . Since that’s the case, the outcome is likely, so you can respond, “I may be able to meet you there. I just have one more thing to finish. I’ll know more by lunch time.”

So, when would you use “might?”

“Might,” also a modal, is used when an outcome is something you’d most likely never do or are reluctant to do. You’re less certain, but there’s wiggle room, how ever slight.

Take the baseball scenario, but change your affinity for the game. In this case, you know you’re working on a project and, if you buckled down, you could finish in time to go to the game. The thought of sitting in the hot sun for two-and-a-half hours on a rock-hard seat splattered with stale beer, however, jump-starts your gag reflex. You know you don’t want to go, but you also know that your sweetie has a way of charming you into doing what he wants. In this case, if pressed, you could go to the game, but you could also make a very compelling case not to go. You are on the fence, though, so you could say, “I might go, but I’m still working on the project that’s due tomorrow morning,” or, “I might not go, because I’m still working on that project due tomorrow morning.”

Are there any exceptions?

Of course. This is the English language after all.

In the first exception, you need to be aware that “might” is the past tense of “may.” So, let’s say that the day after the game, your boss asks your assistant if you got to use the box seats. The assistant thinks you probably did, but doesn’t really know, so he would tell your boss, “Yeah, she might have been able to use them.” Here, remember, the conversation is about a game that was played yesterday. In the past. That little fact is what makes “might” the correct word choice.

The second exception is a little strange in that the conversation must be about something that isn’t happening. Again, in the baseball example, you ask your friend, a college pitching coach, what pitch she thinks is coming up, she should say, “He ‘might‘ throw a knuckleball.” If “may” is used, the sentence would imply that the pitcher was just given permission to throw that rarest of pitches that never fails to jelly-leg a batter right back into the dugout.

In summary:

May = likely outcome or permission

Might = less likely outcome or uncertainty, as well as past tense

. . . and “can?”

Well, remember what my mom asked? “Can” refers to ability. “I can put away a hot dog, large pop, and a cup of chocolate chip mint Dippin’ Dots in the course of one game.”

I do have that ability, by the way, and I exercise it whenever I go to the ballpark.

Three Stages of Ability – May, Might, and Can

March 24, 2013March 24, 2013 ~ Diane Faulkner ~ Leave a comment

“You may remember his name.”

Now, back to the Hannibal trailer. Turns out, “may” was used correctly in this instance. Here’s why:

So, when would you use “might?”

“Might,” also a modal, is used when an outcome is something you’d most likely never do or are reluctant to do. You’re less certain, but there’s wiggle room, how ever slight.

Take the baseball scenario, but change your affinity for the game. In this case, you know you’re working on a project and, if you buckled down, you could finish in time to go to the game. The thought of sitting in the hot sun for two-and-a-half hours on a rock-hard seat splattered with stale beer, however, jump-starts your gag reflex. You know you don’t want to go, but you also know that your sweetie has a way of charming you into doing what he wants. In this case, if pressed, you could go to the game, but you could also make a very compelling case to not go. You are on the fence, though, so you could say, “I might go, but I’m still working on the project that’s due tomorrow morning,” or, “I might not go, because I’m still working on that project due tomorrow morning.”

Are there any exceptions?

Of course. This is the English language after all.

In the first exception, you need to be aware that “might” is the past tense of “may.” So, let’s say that the day after the game, your boss asks your assistant if you got to use the box seats. The assistant thinks you probably did but doesn’t really know, so he would tell your boss, “Yeah, she might have been able to use them.” Here, remember, the conversation is about a game that was played yesterday. In the past.

The second exception is a little strange in that the conversation must be about something that isn’t happening. Again, in the baseball example, you ask your friend, a college pitching coach, what pitch she thinks is coming up, she could say, “He ‘might‘ throw a knuckleball.” If “may” is used, the sentence would imply that the pitcher was just given permission to throw that rarest of pitches that never fails to jelly-leg a batter right back into the dugout.

In summary:

May = likely outcome or permission

Might = less likely outcome or uncertainty, as well as past tense

. . . and “can?”

Well, remember what my mom asked? “Can” refers to ability. “I can put away a hot dog, large pop, and a bowl of chocolate chip mint Dippin’ Dots in the course of one game.”

I do have that ability, by the way, and I exercise it whenever I go to a game.

Truncating tongues

November 26, 2012November 26, 2012 ~ Diane Faulkner ~ Leave a comment

Can a tongue truncate? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, and it is the very act of speaking that actually creates the truncations I’m writing about today.

Truncation, I’m sure you know, is cutting off something. When you truncate a word, you cut part of it off. Unless you are the most formal and stuffy person on earth, you truncate words all the time when you speak. Probably the only time you wouldn’t truncate a word or two when you talk is when you’re trying to teach someone how to speak your language, in which case, your listener needs to hear every syllable you say.

The less formally you speak, the more you are apt to truncate, which is fine. You just have to be careful about how you transfer those spoken truncations to the written word.

What do I mean? Well, again, if you’re a very formal person, you’re not going to truncate your words. In that last sentence alone, you can see that I’m not very formal in this post, because I truncated twice.

Did you catch it?

I truncated the word “are” by cutting off the “a” and replacing it with an apostrophe as I mashed it up against the word “you.” The “you” and the “are” in that sentence, if spoken, would have been said in such quick succession that they would have sounded as if they created one word. There is no such word as “youare,” though, so the sound is represented as “you’re,” and everyone knows what that means.

Now, what prompted me to write about truncations today is a book title I saw. Yes, a book title, which, in my mind, means some major publishing house needs to fire an editorial team. I’m not going to drop anyone in the grease by telling you the book title here, but suffice it to say that those editors have an interesting notion of what “till the end of time” could possibly mean.

“Till” the end of time. God help me, let’s look at the word “till” in some of its forms.

“Till the soil.” In this instance, “till” is a verb. A person who “tills” soil will use some sort of tool to dig up earth, cultivate it, get it ready to receive seeds or plants.
“Fill the till in the cash register.” Here, “till” is a thing, a noun. A till is a part of a cash register that has various sized compartments that separate different denominations and types of money.
“Glaciers melted and left till upon the land.“ As glaciers melt or retreat, they leave behind massive jumbles of rock, gravel, and dirt that compose moraines. Those materials, taken together, are called “till.” Again, a noun.
“Till” the end of time . . . Can you think of what “till” could mean in this instance? It doesn’t refer to any physical thing. It also doesn’t refer to any kind of an action, does it? Of course not. The problem with “till” in this instance is that the word is misspelled. The real word, the truncated word, is ” ‘-t-i-l”.

Notice that there is an apostrophe before the “t” to indicate a part of the word is missing.

The full word is “until.” It’s a preposition that represents the continuance of something. “Until the end of time” is the correct, full phrase. When spoken, “until” is often truncated so that only the last syllable is heard, which is fine. When written, however, if the writer doesn’t want to look like an idiot, the word should be either completely spelled out or written in its truncated form.

Can you see how people are making this error? It’s an easy one to make.

“Could have” is another phrase that’s easy to get wrong while writing. Say, “could have” out loud. Now, say it quickly. How does it sound? Sounds like “could of,” doesn’t it? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen writers write “could of.” Makes me crazy, especially when the writer is a media colleague, or worse, in the teaching profession.

There’s really no excuse for getting these truncations wrong. Truly. No excuse.

Writers, editors, I’m talking to you.