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David J. Sharp's avatar

The benign influence … “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”

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Deborah's avatar

I have to look up whether or not to use that apostrophe every blasted year. In my defense, I'm Canadian, but I've lived here for, I think, 14 years, which is surely long enough to have learned whether or not to use an apostrophe in this instance. I can only hope that publicly humiliating myself with this confession will be enough to get it to stick. (It won't, will it?)

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David J. Sharp's avatar

Or even worse, President’s Dais

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Kemmer's avatar

I just used an apostrophe when referring to Presidents Day in a text. I promise I won't do it again.

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Kemmer's avatar

I realize I should have clarified that I used the plural possessive, not the singular!

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Benjamin Dreyer's avatar

At best a minor sin, then.

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Barney Jones's avatar

Or Presidents' Dei?

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James Petrie's avatar

Speaking of defeating the purpose, I am waiting for the executive order declaring today to be Donald Trump Day. A holiday celebrated by opening an atlas to the appropriate page, taking a Sharpie firmly in hand, and changing Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

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Benjamin Dreyer's avatar

A congresswoman from Upstate New York has already proposed joining Flag Day with the current president’s birthday for a new national holiday, forgetting, apparently, that we prefer our holidays to celebrate dead people.

I’m of course game if they are.

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J. B. Levin's avatar

Google, Bing, and Apple maps have already done the digital equivalent, sort of, to my abhorrence. Pfui.

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Doug Wyatt's avatar

Ooh, they should have rendered the new name in a Sharpie-like font.

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SDG's avatar
Feb 17Edited

“Via the Julian calendar in use at the time of GW’s birth” is one of the more mind-blowing parentheses I’ve read lately, given my interest in the history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars—a topic I’ll be writing about in a couple of months, for reasons you can probably guess. The Julian calendar is still a current-events topic at least once a year for folks of my religious persuasion, due to the remarkable, shall we say, tenacity of a certain group of non-Catholic Christians, but I was either unaware of or at best forgot just how long certain Protestant countries resisted the improved science due to its Catholic association.

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Benjamin Dreyer's avatar

I can't wait to see what you write on the subject. If it's even half as interesting as this one-paragraph preview, I'm going to be rapt!

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SDG's avatar

COUNT ON GEORGE WASHINGTON (and yourself) MAKING AN APPEARANCE, WHICH WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL PLAN

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Susan Kietzman's avatar

Is it the same with Valentines/Valentines'/Valentine's Day? Lately, I've omitted the apostrophe, and I like it. Somehow cleaner?

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Benjamin Dreyer's avatar

Valentine's Day is still the vastly overwhelmingly favorite styling, which is a nice way to remember that the holiday is named after Saint Valentine. If I wanted to erase him and just make it about lovey dovey stuff, I suppose I'd call it Valentines Day. Under no circumstances would you plural possessivize it.

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John D. Hackensacker III's avatar

Are commenters steering clear of the footnoted factual statement because a) yeah, they get it, or b) they're afraid to admit they don't get it? February 17th is the one day of the year on which I ponder such questions.

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Benjamin Dreyer's avatar

It's possible (I've l i t e r a l l y forgotten) I added the footnoted factual statement after my initial post, so people who received this post via email and didn't click on the headline (which would then provide, besides best footnote access, the entire version including any post-publication tweaks) wouldn't have seen it. Maybe.

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keV's avatar

I must admit I can only hear the title of this post in Chris Jackson’s singing voice. I consider that a blessing.

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J. B. Levin's avatar

I have always thought it should be Presidents' Day, though I've probably always called it Presidents Day, or nothing. Some of us are old enough to recall when GW's birthday was celebrated on February 22, ten days following the celebration of Honest Abe's birthday on February 12. Presidents(') Day supposedly was intended to combine the two into one -- I guess someone thought having two holidays that close together was too expensive (I seem to recall they were days off, from school and work, too).

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Saralyn Fosnight's avatar

Copy editing is two words. I was one for 40 years for New York book publishers. Proofreading is closed up.

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Clay Banes's avatar

It's called Presidenting Day in the UK. I had to google SEO.

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Gwen Aber's avatar

Seeing the sculpture featured here, I am feeling two stabs of dread:

an enthroned president DT or a EM; a half-clothed, sculpted in marble, DT or EM.

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Tom Byron's avatar

I'm late to this party but I noticed that no one has yet cited to the legal authority supporting Benjamin's original premise. See 5 U.S.C. § 6103(a) ("The following are legal public holidays: . . . Washington’s Birthday, the third Monday in February."). The federal rules of appellate procedure erroneously referred to the holiday as Presidents' Day for several years until a law student pointed out the error (I worked on the correction amendment about 25 years ago).

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Benjamin Dreyer's avatar

Wow, this is amazing to know. Thanks, Tom!

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