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Is This the Future of Punctuation?
- LeafStorm 15y agoThe problem with the apostrophe is that possessive forms in English are just so horribly screwed that nobody has any idea how to even say them properly, much less how to apply punctuation.
- mdda 15y agoI think that 'nobody' is a bit of an exaggeration. Or are you claiming that people who do know are just nobodies?
- LeafStorm 15y agoYes, "nobody" was an exaggeration. Though there are a lot of edge cases.
- Shenglong 15y agoSometimes, but most cases are quite simple. I learned the difference between they're/there/their sometime before grade 8, and I generally expect people I converse with to recognize that distinction. As for possessive forms - that's even easier. In most cases, if something belongs to someone, use an apostrophe. If it doesn't, then don't. Okay, it can get confusing, but in most cases, it's not.
- gergles 15y agoLeafStorm was talking about saying them properly. How do you say: "That [thing] is Jess's"? (conversely, is it Jess' or Jess's or should we be forced to say 'belongs to Jess')? Now, imagine you're not a native speaker and you have to figure out how to say that. That's the difficulty.
- Shenglong 15y agoThe thing is, I'm not a native speaker; it's not really something I struggled with when I learned English. I believe the general rules I learned were: plural & no possession: no apostrophe singular, possession & name doesn't end with s: 's singular, possession & name ends with s: ' plural, possession & name doesn't end with s: s'
- cpeterso 15y agoI'm a native English speaker and my name ends in 's', yet even I waffle about whether I just use an apostrophe. I generally include an apostrophe just for consistency. My heuristic is: if I would pronounce the extra sound, then include the apostrophe. Unfortunately, this would not help non-native speakers.. <:)
- sp332 15y agoWe can say that Shenglong's rules are "English", and then whatever you do in real life is your "dialect".
- ZeroGravitas 15y agoAnd yet if you try to trace back why those "rules" have any authority and you're likely to end-up back at a claim that it was what everyone did in their real life.
- sp332 15y agoThe rules have the authority we give them. Either we give up on having an English language that we can agree on, or we have arbitrary rules.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- c0riander 15y agoConventionally, you would just say "Jesses" and the possessive would be clear from context. As for the apostrophe, the veritable Strunk & White (arbiters of writing style) say: Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write, Charles's friend Burns's poems the witch's malice Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Moses' Laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by the laws of Moses the temple of Isis.
- graiz 15y agoI think the sarcasm mark (snark) is stupid. Doesn't make any sense⸮
- helen842000 15y agoI think it's useful when having a conversation via IM. Avoids misunderstanding and adds humour. I've also heard it referred to as the sarcastrophe :)
- cpeterso 15y agoI used to be a grammar nazi, but now I accept that we are witnessing hyper-evolution of written language. Before the internet, I didn't realize how pervasively people confused its/it's and lose/loose. (I knew there/their/they're was a common problem.) I previously assumed languages typically evolved through "erosion" by dropping letters or spaces as a matter of saving time or space. But in today's computerized world, time and space are cheaper, so grammar exceptions seem to what is eroding: its/it's is an apparent punctuation exception and lose/loose is a pronunciation exception.
- sp332 15y agoits/it's, they're/their, and you're/your are easy to remember: Possessive pronouns never have apostrophes.
- obiterdictum 15y agoI am not a native English speaker, but I'm constantly dumbfounded as to why anyone would even entertain the idea that "its/it's" are in any way similar. When you substitute one with another, the sentence just does not parse. It stops making sense. By conflating "its" and "it's", you are overloading the meaning of "its", making the language more ambiguous. Perhaps this also has to do with me being accustomed to more formal (programming) languages.
- radarsat1 15y agoThe reason it's confusing is that 's after a personal pronoun usually indicates possession, whereas this is the opposite for it's/its, so in that sense it's an exception to a rule, which people have a hard time remembering.
- spoondan 15y agoThis reminds me of Keith Houston's wonderful blog, Shady Characters (http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/ http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/). Keith has written at length on the pilcrow, interrobang, and sarcasm marks (all touched upon briefly in this article) amongst other punctuation marks. I am somewhat surprised that Shady Characters was not cited by the article. There is simply no better place to learn the surprising, entertaining histories of our punctuation.
- fuzionmonkey 15y agoI think it's about time British-style or "logical punctuation" of quotes becomes standard. Especially coming from a programming background, it just makes more sense. Periods should go outside the quote if they aren't actually part of the quote.
- joejohnson 15y agoI like the Snark symbol. Is that in unicode?
- simcop2387 15y agoThe closest is the reversed question mark '⸮'. You can read more about it at The Wiki, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Irony_punctuation https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Irony_punctua...
- WiseWeasel 15y agoThat showed up as a blank square on my iPhone. Here on HN, I've seen /~ used to denote sarcasm. Alternatively, the winking emoticon ; ) or tongue sticking out emoticon : P work as well.