So, I have a certain weakness with punctuation, so I'll ask you guys what you think about this:
1. There are many USB's on the table.
2. There are many USBs on the table.
Which is more proper, the first one or the second one, and why?
Just seen this thread, and really PTW but (for the record, and in common with the first few replies I've seen) I would
personally always go with the non-apostrophe version. I know that there are style-books out there that say it is anything from acceptable to actually
desirable to use an apostrophe (for one reason or another, which I can appreciate but do not pander to) but I don't follow these at all. Use apostrophes for possessives and contractions only.
For possessives (saving for the "irregular" possessives of I, you, he, she, etc... and (controversially, but I feel it belongs to the same set) the word "one"[1]) that's "
's" tagged onto all that are not s-postfixed plurals. i.e. a box's lid, a bus's driver, Jeeves's master, women's clothing and (although I know that biblical names are
supposed to be exceptions) Jesus's disciples and Moses's basket. For regular plural
s' endings, just add the apostrophe.
[1] "When one uses it as a non-specific Nth-person reference." Like that.
This
somewhat reflects (or is reflected in) the way I say this things. "A box-ez lid. A bus-ez driver. Jeeves-ez master. Wiminz clothing. Jee-zus-ez disciples. Mo-zes-ez basket. Plurals['!]"
For contractions, I mean "it is"=>"it's", "has not"=>"hasn't", and (although some say one should not/shouldn't in this case) "will not"=>"won't". Also "ha'penny" (<= "half penny") and "fo'c'sle" (<= "forecastle"), if one does not consider them merely to be dialect words of some and thus subject to rules of their own anyway. I do
not mean "Personal Computers" => "PC's" with the apostrophe is used to 'contract' the "omputer" bit, as some coutner-pedantic wags may suggest. (Standard reply: "Why not 'P'C's" then?")
I note that I also rarely write/type "P.C.", as I was once taught. Unless I'm talking about someone called Philbert Chagraine Funnyname, or "P.C. Funnyname" for short. Perhaps because I rarely do it, I have no reason to prefer "P.C.s" as the plural, but I
still would not write "P.C.'s" under the geas of having to convey a pluralisation. Some style-books do indeed say otherwise. And of course I
would say "I inwardly groaned as I examined the damage to the P.C.'s police car, that I had just shunted." Although there's also a tautology in that particularly bad example. (And I think I'd stick to "...the PC's [police] car,..." anyway. This having nothing to do with the difference[2] between a Police Constable and a Personal Computer.)
[2] So don't imagine I'm applying something like the rules of Klingon grammar, where the plural form of words depends strictly on whether the noun concerned is 'a body part' (suffixed -Du), 'capable of using language' (-pu) or 'anything else' (-mey). And other such oddities.
Anyway... More than that, I actually have a mental (almost physical!) reaction against seeing apostrophes inappropriately used for pluralisation. As well as "USB's", I see "PC's", "HGV's", here in the UK often "MOT's while-u-wait", but there are often also non-initialism erroneous uses like "hippo's". Where, of course we aren't saying "The USB's voltage line is damaged", "My PC's hard-drive is whirring", "Please report each HGV's tonnage as measured on the weighbridge" "I performed several MOTs while their drivers waited" or "The hippo's teeth are quite scary!". Some people on this forum have even received PMs from me when I've seen this (although far less, in proportion, than of the offenders who use "could of", or similar, where "could
have"/"could've" was actually intended).
Ok, that was a long "record", to be "for the" of. It reflects my feelings on the matter, though. Now I'm seeing we're mentioning the Oxford Comma. (My personal learnt rule: the commas are there to
replace the "and" in something like "This and that and the other", thus becomes "This, that and the other" when you convert all but the final "and". Similarly "This, that
or the other".) Whereas it might
indeed aid understanding and avoid ambiguity, when a sentence of mine (noticeably!) gets to that point then I might re-write it. "There are three choices: to always use the Oxford, or Harvard, Comma; to
never use the Oxford/Harvard Comma; to avoid the issue of Oxford(/Harvard) comma use altogether by use of other mechanisms!)
Lest you think I'm dyed-in-the-wool about the grammar I learnt so many decades ago, here's a learnt grammatical rule that I
regularly break... In fact, I have done in this very post. A suitable punctuation mark should be inserted prior to every quote (start or end) that is not itself the start of a sentence. Occasionally I also break the rule Compare and contrast:
The man says "While you're here, please fill in the Visitors' Book." <-- raw and unambiguous, although there
ought to have been a comma after "says", by the rules I was taught when I was still an age that was in single (decimal) digits.
"While you're here," he said, "Please fill in the Visitors' Book." <-- split at the clause junction anyway, but also the "he said" is an aside-type clause. (I would not personally use either ,", or ", in this situation. At least not without typoing.)
"While you're here,
please", he implored, "fill in the Visitors' Book." <-- comma
not within quotes, here only for the "he implored" aside-clause and no comma exists at that point in the speech.
He quickly and rapidly shouted after them "While you're here, please fill in..." but, as they disappeared round the corner, continued with "...the Visitors' Book..." in a more resigned mumble. <-- an awkward example, sorry, which also makes fast and loose use of ellipses. No
other comma punctuation (clausal or list-separating) is operating at the quote-boundaries.
Let's face it, they're
all contrived, and at least partially awkward, examples.
(And in the previous sentence the first comma is an outlying-clause separator while the other two are inline-clause separators for a clause segment which
happens) to start with a conjugation, for better or worse. Even if Oxford Commas were allowed I can't quite see how that might parse to "Item 1=Let's face it; Item 2=they're all contrived; Item 3=at least partially awkward; Item4=examples" in order to create a whole entity that is "sum(Item1+Item2+Item3), qualified by Item4" or "sum(Item1+Item2+(Item3, qualified by Item4))".
This, folks, is why I often spend a long time editing what I've written (not always successfully). Indeed, I re-wrote this latter end of this very post several times. And have left myself bemused that I've put two separate (but related) paragraphs in a pair of parentheses whose start was prior to the word "And" (being 'illegally' used to start a sentence, rebel that I am), which contains countless other nested parentheses in the mean time and whose ending partner resides just after
this exclamation mark!)
Now to read the rest of the thread. Which looks very active. (Four new replies, when I had hardly even started reading the first page, even...)
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Topic: Grammer, Grammer! (grammar thread) (Read 15484 times)