Search results for 'tag:Pronunciation tag:Apostrophes' matching tags 'Pronunciation' and 'Apostrophes'

Re: Proper Use of Apostrophes (Dos and Don'ts about Do's and Don't's)

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:32:00 GMT

According to the Gregg Reference Manual: "To form the possessive of a singular noun that ends in an s sound, be guided by the way you pronounce the word. If a new syllable is formed in the pronunciation of the possessive, add an apostrophe plus s."

Ex: your boss's approval (you pronounce it as bosses); therefore, add the apostrophe.

Also according to the Gregg Reference Manual: "However, if the addition of the extra syllable would make a word ending in s hard to pronounce, use the apostrophe only."

Ex: Los Angeles' freeways (try saying Los Angeleses). Difficult to do; therefore, just use the apostrophe.

Best grammar books are The Gregg Reference Manual and the Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers.

I have no problem with boss' approval. At least this is a rule where one can understand why people get it wrong. There are grammar errors that bother me more; I cannot understand why people misuse apostrophes.

Re: Plural of s = s'es?

Pter — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:43:31 GMT

Yoong Liat
2a. There are two s's in the sentence. (The modern tendency is to add -s to pluralise a word. However, the -'s is still common. I would write s's because ss looks odd.)
2b. There are two PSs in the meeting. (I think either PSs or PS's is fine although I prefer the latter. )

Thanks again, Yoong Liat. I think this is not a matter of right or wrong, but just a matter of style. Many people still use the apostrophe. In fact, if the abbreviation has to be in lower case (I can't think of such a situation yet), I would also use the apostrophe. Therefore, I would write MPs, but mp's. I won't write mps because the s could be confused as part of the abbreviation.

Yoong Liat
In addition, how should they be pronounced? (Pronounce as in 1a and 1b)

Thanks. That's where I am confused. I thought the pronunciation need to match the spelling and therefore "es". Now I know that this is not necessary. I just checked my pronouncing dictionary and surprised to find that it lists all the pronunciations of the plurals of all the 26 alphabets. The plural of s is s's, and the pronunciation is /esiz/. I should have checked that dictionary earlier.

Yoong Liat
PS I have never seen P.SS. or p.ss. My copy of Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary does not have such an entry nor does any other dictionary I checked. (Maybe yours is not the latest edition.)

Seems that we are talking about different dictionaries instead of different versions. The name on the page you quoted does not have "Webster's". Anyway, why we need a plural for PS? A postscript is a short remark. Although it is possible that the "short" remark is not that short and may have more than one paragraph, it is still one short remark. Two paragraphs don't make it two postscripts. I was told that an additional PS added after the original PS is PPS - Post-Postscript.

My official comments on the new EF

Kooyeen — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:39:48 GMT

Hi,
here are my comments.

Youtube videos
Good! That's a cool feature, embedded videos. The only problem is that you can also watch other videos in the same embedded player, not only the one the poster intended to show, because it shows (and plays) related videos at the end. So I just wanted to say that if I post something like "SoCal girl - Accent" to show Southern Cali's accent, I am not responsible for whatever shows as related videos, which might well be something like "SoCal girls going wild" or "Naughty hot Socal girls".

Original poster who started a thread
Someone else already pointed this out in another thread. When you read the list of threads, you can see "last post by..." but you don't know who started the thread unless you click on it and take a look inside. Is it possible to do something for this? I think it's useful info...

Avatar, PMs, etc.
Good! Now everyone has a lot of features available, even though I realize that will probably mean more work for admins if some problems occurs (especially because of PMs for everyone)

Search function
Good! Finally! Thank God! The old one really sucked... It wasn't possible to search someone's posts for a word, for example. Now I can search my own posts or anyone else's. Really, lot of features. But there's still a problem, like in the old one. In the old EF, if I tried to search for something that contained an apostrophe, like "I'm" or "you're", it got rid of the apostrophe and searched for "Im" or "youre". So it was no possible to search for those, for example.
Now... it's ok if you search someone's posts, but still not ok if you search the whole forum. I found a workaround: if you have to search for, say "I'd", you do an advanced search and you put an asterisk in the author field. So you have to search *'s posts for "I'd" in order to do a global search, otherwise you'll get a search for "Id" (no apostrophe).
Lemme know about this...

Community
This forum now looks like a real community of learners, not just simple a forum.I really like this, that's what learners need, a good community where they can learn, practice and have fun at the same time.The chat is still connected to TCP, so I still don't understand TCP's purpose, sorry... You could make that chat more powerful and part of EF... LOL, it doesn't matter, forget it
Anyway, the only thing that doesn't make EF a real community, in my opinion, is the fact that anonymous users are still allowed to post in discussions sections like "topic of the moment" or "Word games", etc, for example. Anons have the right to ask questions and get help (grammar and pronunciation sections, for example), but I don't know why the should be allowed to post everywhere... It kind of bothers me to still see those anons in the middle of a well developed community.

Minor points, not important
Blue backgrounds are very nice, maybe a lighter shade of blue might look better and have a better contrast with the text. Maybe I noticed this because I think the old EF was a little bit lighter. And the site is sooo slow... I know it's because of indexing. I hope it'll be fast in the end!

That's all. Bye.

Re: Formal Letter - author codes, and the use of "Con't"...

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:03:53 GMT

There are nearly 3 million google hits and 2 million yahoo hits for CON'T as the abbreviation for continue/continued.
It's not a form listed in popular dictionaries.

cont.
contd
cont'd
cnt

Why do you suppose it has become so common?
Perhaps:
- It's an abbreviation of an existing abbreviation: cont'd / con't
- The apostrophe is a stress mark for the pronunciation of the word instead of replacing letters
- Abbreviations can have slang forms too

Re: Contractions again (I am sorry)

CalifJim — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 05:46:50 GMT

I agree that it's useless to add apostrophe-s to indicate is when the word ends in a sibilant (i.e., would take -es to form a plural). In these cases the apostrophe-s looks very strange, and nothing is gained where pronunciation is concerned. But in all other cases (regardless of whether they end in a voiced or unvoiced sound), the apostrophe-s for is is fine. (Go figure!)

*My watch's slow.
My watch is slow.
Dinner's ready.
Mike's here.

My observation is that learners find these nearly impossible to incorporate in their own conversations. Any comments on that?

CJ

Re: Possessive of singular noun that ends in S

Tanit — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 14:19:36 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

what's the rule in english grammar for forming the possessive of a singular noun that ends in s?

When I was in high school, I was taught to add only an apostrophe and not an "s". Only later did I discover that both forms are possible.

Read:

" To make the possessive form of a SINGULAR noun that ends in -s, some style guides say to add just an apostrophe ('); others say you should add an apostrophe and s ('s). Some say that either way is correct.
The best answer: when dealing with SINGULAR nouns, find out what the expectations are wherever you're writing and go by that. In most cases, you can just ask your teacher what he or she prefers. (...)
So, to give a couple of examples...
For "nucleus" (singular noun ending in -s), write is as:
nucleus' or nucleus's
depending on the rules where you're writing. "

on this page, second issue.

And, from the BBC website:

" However, if the singular noun ends in âsâ as in your example, Everson, you can either just add an apostrophe (â) or apostrophe 's' (âs):
- 'All of Dickensâ novels have now been adapted for television.'
- 'All of Dickensâs novels have now been adapted for television.'
Note that these spellings are pronounced differently. If you simply add an apostrophe, the pronunciation does not change, but if you add apostrophe 's' (âs), the possessive is pronounced /iz/.
With singular nouns ending in double 's' (...) I think it is more normal to add apostrophe 's' (âs) because the spelling with apostrophe s then indicates the pronunciation required:
- 'The bossâs secretary resigned.'
- 'The princessâs diamonds were worth two million pounds.' "

Re: Apostrophe use with proper name ending in a vowel

M. Caliban — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 03:26:00 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

I seems adding only an 's' changes the pronunictiation of the name so it always 'feels' like I should add an apostrophe somehwere.

When it comes to pronunciation, names exist in a realm all their own. Elizabeth Smith will have her name pronounced as an English word, but if you ask a native speaker to read aloud the names Juan Delgado, Mike Straczynski, and Hanzo Hattori, they're going to adjust their inner pronunciation guides, sometimes radically.

Likewise, when the majority of speakers are asked to read aloud, "I saw Mrs. Ye at the dentist's office yesterday, and think we should invite the Yes over for dinner," they'll probably say 'Ye-z' even though the word they see would typically be pronounced as ' yÄs.'

Re: putting the apostrophe to make it a possessive

J Lewis — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:41:18 GMT

Logically you should never put an apostrophe for making a plural, but in the examples "and" and "do" are quoted words and sometimes here it's felt that an apostrophe is necessary for reasons of pronunciation. I think there's no problem with "ands", but with "dos" there might be a temptation to pronounce it as "doss", so "do's" would make it clearer (although in the phrase "dos and don'ts" it's perfectly clear).
"Gins" and "apples" are perfectly normal plurals and there's no reason at all to think of putting an apostrophe.
A place where apostrophes are often used is in initials: MP = member of parliament and the plural is sometimes written MP's, but again I see no need, because the lower case "s" already tells us not to say "M.P.S.". Also decades can be written as "the 1970s"; I see no need to write "the 1970's".
Perhaps the only case is in quoting single letters: "Steel" has two e's.

Re: Doubts about paper (I)

Clive — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 06:14:48 GMT

Hi Davkett,

Thank you for the interesting response. I've been thinking about it, and I have a few comments.

I'm not familar with the site you quoted, and I don't know its credentials. I don't agree with what it baldly says about Singular Nouns (ending with -s) .... eg James' room or Chris Jonesâ dog. I would put an 'apostrophe + s' in both cases.

However, I looked this point up in Swan's 'Practical English Usage' (Section 505.3 in my edition). He gives as examples Charles's wife but Socrates' last words. He doesn't discuss the matter.

I also looked it up in Thomson and Martinet's 'A Practical English Grammar' Section 14). They say classical names ending in s usually add only the apostrophe. Note the usually. They continue Other names ending in s can take 's or the apostrophe alone eg Mr. Jones's or Mr. Jones' house.

I also googled a bit on Sextus Empiricus. There are hits both ways, although perhaps fewer with the 's. However, the hits with 's include some sites and articles that look quite scholarly.

Finally, here's my personal opinion. None of these sources seem to discuss the reasons behind their 'rules'. I think it's because of the pronunciation. We say Socrateez and it sounds good, but it's harder to say Socrateezez and it doesn't sound good. For this reason, my feeling is that, for classical names that end in 'es', I'd omit the s in speech, but I'd be quite happy to leave it in a text that is not pronounced aloud, where it would look fine and sound is not an issue. Now, consider classical names that don't end in es. It seems fine to me to say the Cyclops's eye. It also seems fine to me to say Empiricusez, and it doesn't sound bad.

So, that's why my personal preference is to say Empiricus's . . .

Anyway, thanks again for raising such an interesting issue.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Proper use of the apostrophe (Guest:clreilly)

Guest — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 11:35:13 GMT

I am continually stunned by the fact that so few sources seem to realise the logic that lies behind their own rules. I have heard whacky rules that suggests that ancient or biblical names ending with s are exceptions, or words of more than one syllable ending with s.

The 'eez' thing here is at least in the right ballpark. The rule should be that if the final s is immediately preceded by a vowel with no other consonant in between, it's a candidate for dropping the extra s. So JesUs is a candidate, as is SocratEs, but not JAmes, whose final vowel sound is the A, not the E, and has an M between it and the S.

That's not the entire story, though, inasmuch as it's really the awkwardness of pronunciation which should tell you. James's doesn't sound awkward at all (it has a 'ziz' sound). Jesus's does ('zuzz-ziz'). Morris's seems to be okay, though.