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No need; I think the original formulation---as a mnemonic---is just fine. We don't really need a "general rule" here anyway, and to be honest, English orthogra
by blahedo 14y ago
No need; I think the original formulation---as a mnemonic---is just fine. We don't really need a "general rule" here anyway, and to be honest, English orthography and "general rules" don't really go well together.
The only reason I posted at all is because linguistics is an area where a lot of quite intelligent people hold some extremely unexamined (and incorrect) beliefs, and there is furthermore a common tendency to propagate those beliefs as if they were fact. As a result, whenever I see someone articulating anything that is formulated like a general rule about a language (or about language in general), I try to make corrections where I can.
- pyre 14y agoYou took "the apostrophe replaces the missing letters in contractions" as me postulating that all apostrophes are only used for contractions, which is jumping to conclusions, IMO. Even if that statement is taken as a general rule, I can't think of any contractions that don't use an apostrophe, and it certainly doesn't state that contractions are the only place where apostrophes are used.