I once suggested to Wendell Berry that his double-referent "one anothers" would be more appropriately "each others." I lost that battle... Well, it never even amounted to a whack of the swords, much less a skirmish.
You've convinced me (although I confess I'd been wavering, given conflicting feedback I'd received from my writing groups). Your consistency argument won me over, which makes sense as that was precisely the reason I argued for the series comma. Alas, I had been taught that the possessive of words ending in a sibilant (s, but also including z) took the apostrophe without the s.
As always, thank you for everything I've learned here and on Bsky. (Just this week: soft-pedal, not soft-peddle, among others.) Give my love to Sallie.
Thank you, Rich, for the nice note. I really do try to be sensible in between being pigheaded and dictatorial. It's a delicate balance. Sallie says thank you too.
As to your footnote 4: This may be my graphic designer background speaking, but there are fairly easy-to-learn keystrokes for “ , ” , ‘ , and ’ .
On a Mac, anyway, they involve the option or option plus shift keys pressed with the left or right square bracket keys. They’re firmly embedded in my muscle memory. I get really annoyed when I see some otherwise reasonably nice typography with ' instead of ’ for a possessive.
Oh, of course, there are always easy-to-learn things, but sometimes for me they are not so easy-to-remember. Though I am well versed in how to make an en dash – and an em dash — on my Mac.
I guess it correlates with my age and general crankiness but I never write so much as a skeet on my Iphone, and I text (verb) only when absolutely necessary.
Came here to mention this! I agree, much less easy to remember, but convenient when you’re typing somewhere — like a substack comment box — where “smart quotes” aren’t done automatically.
>increasingly obscure Exceptions for Antiquity Rule
ooh, that's a keeper
>not "home"
My personal mnemomic is "homing pigeons."
>discouraged the use of “former” and “latter” on the grounds that they confused readers
I come from a somewhat different area of editing — technical editing — where we know that a) people don't want to read the blasted text in the first place, and b) will skim, skip, or otherwise give minimal attention to the text while they're trying to do the thing that they came to read about. That being the case, we really emphasized clarity and comprehensibility, perhaps to a fault — not necessarily because certain usages were confusing per se, but because we knew people weren't READING-reading.* I once summarized our strategy as "don't make the reader back up":
"Don't make the reader back up" tends to be good advice, which I try to balance sensibly with "If you don't really want to read what I've written, I can't really do anything about that."
Well, that was the thing. I tried to convey to writers and editors in training that, by definition, no one wants to be reading the documentation. They turn to it only when they have to, and then they're often not well-disposed toward it. But user success with a product often hinges on how clearly it can be explained, so it always was a challenge.
Anyway, like I say, it's a different area/genre of writing.
Ah, sorry, it was right there. If we are going to allow only an apostrophe for plurals, then shouldn't words where the pronunciation doesn't get an extra "-es" sound also get that treatment? Socrates' teachings? Ulysses' journey? Jut because we don't say "Socrateses teachings"? (I'm British, perhaps there is a difference in usage?)
But that's indeed the thing about trying to judge these things by pronunciation: You may say something one way, someone else may say it another way. Which is why I prefer to keep the pronunciation issue out of it entirely. The 's stands, in writing, for possession for a singular noun; that is, it's the way it's written. How one says it: not germane.
Sorry for making you explain your entire point twice, I'm clearly a little obtuse this evening.
Your rule is the one I give my English-as-a-second-language learners, but more because I don't want to overcomplicate their lives with usages that they will never encounter anyway, or stress them out with the idea that they need to know how to pronounce every single possessive in order to spell it.
For myself, I can't stop myself from reading "Ulysses's journey" as "Ulysseses journey", and I don't think I could ever bring myself to write it. Luckily there is an easy workaround: "the journey of Ulysses". :-)
I love the word defenestrate, which seems to call for the term auto da fe nearby. [How does one add an accent in comments?] Also love the look Sallie gave you--animals do convey so much sometimes! Also fond of triple adjectives, but try to restrain myself. Thank you for writing for all of us grammar geeks!
Let's see, I can do é on my Mac by typing option-e and then e. And of course on my phone I'd just press gently on the e key and choose the one with the accent mark I want.
You needed to show Sallie your empty hands in the style of a Vegas blackjack dealer. Well, it’s the only gesture that works around here with my Zoey.
Defenestrate… is that only for physical windows or does it work on metaphorical windows? Or would that be idiomatic windows? Either way, there was a smile.
I *always* show Sallie the empty plate; that rarely satisfies her (until she's licked it clean).
Whether the window is real or simply a window in your mind (perhaps it resides next to the windmills of your mind), you may use it for defenestrative purposes!
Thank you so much for these deeply sensible guidelines! I'm so glad I posed my pestersome questions about Xerxes and friends. Here's another: In our house now, we refer to Dreyer's English as Dreyer's. Is there a correct (if maybe goofy) way to refer to _its_ possessions? Dreyer's's takes on Xerxeses' orthography?
One, I love your footnotes, and two, whenever I see "defenestrate" I recall the old 60s sitcom "I'm Dickens, he's Defenestrate." John Astin and Marty Ingels together? Awesome.
à propos third place: In this Olympic season, the first three places and their metallic associations are the ones the world gets excited about. Since settling in Switzerland, I learned that there is another level of distinction. The first eight places receive an “Olympic Diploma.” The diploma ranks are published and celebrated here as a mark of excellence. Fourth place seems to be universally pitied, however; in German, often referred to as the “tin medal” or the “leather medal.”
And à propos apropos, I just learned today that the phrase has been officially anglicized to “apropos,” according to Merriam-Webster.
I learned the meaning of ‘defenestrate’ in the 1970s, when a Swarthmore College student began an ill-considered and unsuccessful campaign to rid the campus of then-President Theodore Friend. The slogan was “Defenestrate Dorie.” In the end, only the aggrieved student achieved exit, presumably by graduating.
Again, it's a copyeditorial convention more than some highly justifiable English language mandate, but it's easy to adhere to, and it's tidy. And, indeed, some authors do have a tendency to simply switch back and forth more or less at random, and that makes my eyes twitch.
Slight further refinement, as long as we're here: If you're talking about the individual one-on-one relationships within a group of people, as opposed to more generalized relationships among everyone in the group, you might find "each other" to be the phrase you want. If you follow me.
I once suggested to Wendell Berry that his double-referent "one anothers" would be more appropriately "each others." I lost that battle... Well, it never even amounted to a whack of the swords, much less a skirmish.
You've convinced me (although I confess I'd been wavering, given conflicting feedback I'd received from my writing groups). Your consistency argument won me over, which makes sense as that was precisely the reason I argued for the series comma. Alas, I had been taught that the possessive of words ending in a sibilant (s, but also including z) took the apostrophe without the s.
As always, thank you for everything I've learned here and on Bsky. (Just this week: soft-pedal, not soft-peddle, among others.) Give my love to Sallie.
Thank you, Rich, for the nice note. I really do try to be sensible in between being pigheaded and dictatorial. It's a delicate balance. Sallie says thank you too.
As to your footnote 4: This may be my graphic designer background speaking, but there are fairly easy-to-learn keystrokes for “ , ” , ‘ , and ’ .
On a Mac, anyway, they involve the option or option plus shift keys pressed with the left or right square bracket keys. They’re firmly embedded in my muscle memory. I get really annoyed when I see some otherwise reasonably nice typography with ' instead of ’ for a possessive.
Oh, of course, there are always easy-to-learn things, but sometimes for me they are not so easy-to-remember. Though I am well versed in how to make an en dash – and an em dash — on my Mac.
And all of this stuff is perilously easy on one's iPhone, to be sure.
I guess it correlates with my age and general crankiness but I never write so much as a skeet on my Iphone, and I text (verb) only when absolutely necessary.
Those are some intense standards!
And by the way, just finally got around to ordering “Dreyers English” and am very much looking forward to reading it.
Oh, lovely, I hope you enjoy it. Keep me apprised!*
*If you like it.
Came back here when someone liked my comment and realized I neglected to tell you that I did like the book, and keep it on my desk for easy reference.
Came here to mention this! I agree, much less easy to remember, but convenient when you’re typing somewhere — like a substack comment box — where “smart quotes” aren’t done automatically.
>increasingly obscure Exceptions for Antiquity Rule
ooh, that's a keeper
>not "home"
My personal mnemomic is "homing pigeons."
>discouraged the use of “former” and “latter” on the grounds that they confused readers
I come from a somewhat different area of editing — technical editing — where we know that a) people don't want to read the blasted text in the first place, and b) will skim, skip, or otherwise give minimal attention to the text while they're trying to do the thing that they came to read about. That being the case, we really emphasized clarity and comprehensibility, perhaps to a fault — not necessarily because certain usages were confusing per se, but because we knew people weren't READING-reading.* I once summarized our strategy as "don't make the reader back up":
https://www.mikepope.com/blog/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=2343
* I do love me some contrastive-focus reduplication
"Don't make the reader back up" tends to be good advice, which I try to balance sensibly with "If you don't really want to read what I've written, I can't really do anything about that."
Well, that was the thing. I tried to convey to writers and editors in training that, by definition, no one wants to be reading the documentation. They turn to it only when they have to, and then they're often not well-disposed toward it. But user success with a product often hinges on how clearly it can be explained, so it always was a challenge.
Anyway, like I say, it's a different area/genre of writing.
What about a plural? My parents' house? My parents's house?
My parents' house. (Not unlike the Harrises' house, which is not the Harrises's house.)
Also: Whenever anyone writes parent's, 93 times out of 100 they meant to write parents'. Maybe 94.
Ah, sorry, it was right there. If we are going to allow only an apostrophe for plurals, then shouldn't words where the pronunciation doesn't get an extra "-es" sound also get that treatment? Socrates' teachings? Ulysses' journey? Jut because we don't say "Socrateses teachings"? (I'm British, perhaps there is a difference in usage?)
But that's indeed the thing about trying to judge these things by pronunciation: You may say something one way, someone else may say it another way. Which is why I prefer to keep the pronunciation issue out of it entirely. The 's stands, in writing, for possession for a singular noun; that is, it's the way it's written. How one says it: not germane.
Sorry for making you explain your entire point twice, I'm clearly a little obtuse this evening.
Your rule is the one I give my English-as-a-second-language learners, but more because I don't want to overcomplicate their lives with usages that they will never encounter anyway, or stress them out with the idea that they need to know how to pronounce every single possessive in order to spell it.
For myself, I can't stop myself from reading "Ulysses's journey" as "Ulysseses journey", and I don't think I could ever bring myself to write it. Luckily there is an easy workaround: "the journey of Ulysses". :-)
Bingo.
I love the word defenestrate, which seems to call for the term auto da fe nearby. [How does one add an accent in comments?] Also love the look Sallie gave you--animals do convey so much sometimes! Also fond of triple adjectives, but try to restrain myself. Thank you for writing for all of us grammar geeks!
Let's see, I can do é on my Mac by typing option-e and then e. And of course on my phone I'd just press gently on the e key and choose the one with the accent mark I want.
Useful for things like… I dunno … Gérard 😀
You needed to show Sallie your empty hands in the style of a Vegas blackjack dealer. Well, it’s the only gesture that works around here with my Zoey.
Defenestrate… is that only for physical windows or does it work on metaphorical windows? Or would that be idiomatic windows? Either way, there was a smile.
I *always* show Sallie the empty plate; that rarely satisfies her (until she's licked it clean).
Whether the window is real or simply a window in your mind (perhaps it resides next to the windmills of your mind), you may use it for defenestrative purposes!
Sallie is definitely giving you THE LOOK. How dare you not have an infinite amount of marmalade and toast for her??
THE GIRL IS CLEARLY STARVING!
Thank you so much for these deeply sensible guidelines! I'm so glad I posed my pestersome questions about Xerxes and friends. Here's another: In our house now, we refer to Dreyer's English as Dreyer's. Is there a correct (if maybe goofy) way to refer to _its_ possessions? Dreyer's's takes on Xerxeses' orthography?
You mean like when I say that Dusty Springfield's version of "Close to You" kicks Karen Carpenter's's butt? Like that?
Amazing. Yes—with your leave—like that exactly.
You have been on my mind in this Olympic season as I read about "Biles'" accomplishments.
Bleh’.
I adore your footnotes (and parenthetical asides).
One, I love your footnotes, and two, whenever I see "defenestrate" I recall the old 60s sitcom "I'm Dickens, he's Defenestrate." John Astin and Marty Ingels together? Awesome.
Ha ha ha!
à propos third place: In this Olympic season, the first three places and their metallic associations are the ones the world gets excited about. Since settling in Switzerland, I learned that there is another level of distinction. The first eight places receive an “Olympic Diploma.” The diploma ranks are published and celebrated here as a mark of excellence. Fourth place seems to be universally pitied, however; in German, often referred to as the “tin medal” or the “leather medal.”
And à propos apropos, I just learned today that the phrase has been officially anglicized to “apropos,” according to Merriam-Webster.
What is the Dreyers ruling on apropos?
Yes, “apropos” has been English for a few hundred years now.
Now I feel very old indeed.
I learned the meaning of ‘defenestrate’ in the 1970s, when a Swarthmore College student began an ill-considered and unsuccessful campaign to rid the campus of then-President Theodore Friend. The slogan was “Defenestrate Dorie.” In the end, only the aggrieved student achieved exit, presumably by graduating.
Oh dear.
Glad to get some ‘each other’ guidance here because I use it interchangeably with ‘one another’ but it’s never felt right.
Again, it's a copyeditorial convention more than some highly justifiable English language mandate, but it's easy to adhere to, and it's tidy. And, indeed, some authors do have a tendency to simply switch back and forth more or less at random, and that makes my eyes twitch.
Slight further refinement, as long as we're here: If you're talking about the individual one-on-one relationships within a group of people, as opposed to more generalized relationships among everyone in the group, you might find "each other" to be the phrase you want. If you follow me.
Duly noted. Thank you.
Such an entertaining read
Thank you!