[OT, grammar and punctuation] Use of commas in US and British style?

[Pielorinho]

PS If any of y'all are interested in descriptive grammar, you could do much worse than reading a book by Daniel Pinker -- I recommend especially Words and Rules, a fascinating look at how humans form language.

Daniel Pinker? 'Scuse me. I'm afraid I sometimes smoke crack while posting about grammar.

Steven Pinker. Thanks, Marius, for the reminder!

Daniel

 

[Ryan Koppenhaver]

So, if the word is singular, and ends in s, do you just add an apostrophe, or do you go apostrophe and then another s?

I used to prefer "s's", but now I'm kinda lazy, and I think people can figure out whether the word is singular or plural on their own.

With a couple of weird exceptions, such as Biblical names (e.g., "Jesus" and "Moses"), singular nouns should always be made possessive with "'s", even if they end in the letter "s".

***

Also, re: "I could care less":

I think that while the phrase most probably originated as a sarcastic counterpart to "I couldn't care less", most people who use it now do so purely out of habit, rather than with a consideration of the literal meaning.

 

[jeffh]

But in this case the nature of Rick and Sarah's relationship is ubiquitous. The reader is unsure of whether they are paired or not.

.....

This bothers me a lot as well (notice I spelled it a lot not alot which is another thing that drives me nuts).

Ah, yes, "ubiquitous" (which means "everywhere") instead of "ambiguous" (which means "having more than one possible meaning"). Seen that one before and it irks me. On the other hand, you're bang on about using"alot" instead of "a lot", a much more common and, to me, much more irksome error.

A big pet peeve of mine is using quotation marks as a form of emphasis, which backfires on any reader who is remotely literate - it makes it sound like sarcasm, which achieves the opposite of the desired effect.

 

[Sir Edgar]

Is this thread still going on? Well, I didn't bother to read all of it, but what are your opinions on "an" coming before "h" words?

For example:

"He had an hernia."

or

"He had a hernia."

Whenever I see "an" coming before an "h" word (like now) it seems odd in most cases (except in this sentence). Does anyone recall what Strunk & White says about this or the Chicago Manual of Style? Thanks.

 

[Sir Hawkeye]

Not looking it up, but:

"a" vs. "an" is strictly determined by the initial sound of the word (Vowels: "an", consonants:"a"). A silent "h" requires "an." A pronounced "h" requires "a."

A hernia
An herb (pronounced "erb")

The problem comes with words that have variable pronunciations.

A historic
An istoric (At least, I think "istoric" is an acceptable pronunciation. It shows up way too often in media if it isn't.)

 

[Dahak]

Emerson, Lake & Palmer = British Rock Band

Emerson, Lake, & Palmer = American Law Firm

What a difference a pond and commas make.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

An herb (pronounced "erb")

In Australia we pronounce the h in herb, so it's like herbie (the car).

Duncan

 

[Caedrel]

'Strine

Veyr true - in fact, I think we Australians always pronounce the H at the beginning - "a history", "a herb" and would only drop it out when making fun of an English accent ("an 'erb", "an 'istory", "'ow about it, then, guv?" )

While you can get an idea what state of Australia someone comes from by their accent, there's not a lot of difference despite our sizable geographic dispersity: there's much less variation than in the US (which is of comparable size and age) and the UK (which is a lot, lot smaller but also a much more established country and culture). Is the UK becoming less varied, accent-wise, as time goes on with the advent of TV, radio, mass communication, etc?

I recall someone saying once that actors in the US were taught to speak with a Californian accent, because that was the least prominent or most generic of the US accents... New Yorker seems quite popular to me, but maybe it's just been popularised by all the sitcoms set in the place

 

[arwink]

ANYWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me, I just irritated by the overuse of exclamation marks

Sorry. As the non-Morrus half of the comma controversy that started this, I felt the urge to weigh in.

But the exclamation thing does bug me if used more than once in a paragraph. Possibly even one a page.