By Spelling, Apostrophes

You can use till and until interchangeably in both writing and speech, though as the first word in a sentence until is more common: Until you get that paper written, don’t even think about going to the movies. If you’ve always thought that till is a shortened form of...

Hello Anon (MN?) and YoHF, YoHF’s re-draft is excellent, with a very good style. You should try and follow the style and rhythm of the English. In case you look at it too closely, there are a couple of minor errors in it which I show below. As no-one else has replied to you regarding your...

Hi Webreaper, Welcome to the forum. Today I wrote an email referring to paragraphs in a journalist's article, and was corrected for my use of abbreviation combined with apostrophes. My goodness, who is correcting your email? The reason I ask is this. Email is a very informal medium. eg Some...

Thank you for your answers. I often wonder how English is perceived by those who don't use it as a first language. Since I've known English all my life, I feel like I've never been able to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the language. I've tried looking at texts written in English and...

Forbes wrote: LeicesterLad wrote:It does seem a little inconsistent though. Surely it would make sense to use the apostrophe universally to imply possesion, whatever or whoever the "possessor" I used to think this when I was first taught about the possessive 's'. Apparently it was at one...

Yes, your spelling is really too casual to understand the problem you are presenting. The lone apostrophe is the least of your worries.

Hi Jarl, This is an interesting fantasy story. Your main problem is your spelling so either get your dictionary out or carefully go through it using a spellchecker. A few of the incorrect words (and there are others): scholl, actuely, munk, sinch, couldt,. You also need to put in the...

This is indeed correct, although your apostrophy is in fact an apostrophe.... I thought I would point out the correct spelling of the word seeing as this is a forum on English language. Can I suggest some additional reading: "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. It covers the whole spectrum...

Thankyou for your reply, Clive, the more I think about what is common usage, the more frustrated I get, as I am passionate about English, and feel that it is a discipline, albeit, 'elastic sided'. But... I also know that our language is continually evolving, and when the common laws of grammar...

To complement my post: Till is slightly more informal. When used at the beginning of a sentence, we would usually use until: Until they arrived, everything was fine. (NOT Till they arrived …) To check the "apostrophe issue", I found this at http://www.wsu.edu: Since it looks like an...