Brutal in so many ways.

Who's Steve Job?

I was just reading Lorrie Moore's Paris Review interview, and this part made me smile inside. What impelled me to read the interview, by the way, was her story "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk," which is ****ing awesome.

Holy God the Paris Review interviews archive is the greatest thing on Erf

God damn, I hate "the thing is, is..." Except that it is so common in speech now that I can't very well look down on everyone who does it, because that would be everyone. (Actually I'm fine with looking down on everyone, but it's not a useful distinguishing characteristic when everyone falls on the same side of the line.)

It's rare in written work, though, so that article is still funny for doing it.


I'm not sure what I think of this. You're completely correct that it is both acceptable and sometimes good writing to begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. But (ducwidt?) I'm not sure it follows that it is just as acceptable to do it when linking clauses with a semicolon; I don't think it does achieve exactly the same effect. Maybe it's just me, but while "Sometimes this thread makes me feel better. But mostly it just makes me feel sad" looks fine, doing the same thing with a semicolon in place of the period doesn't.

I dunno.

I wonder how many people would write "Steve Jobs' life" and how many "Steve Jobs's life".

I would always choose the latter, but I suspect a majority wouldn't.

When I was in Texas I absolutely loathed the prevalence of things things like "Texas' best ____". As far as I'm concerned, if you would pronounce it "TECKS-uhs-uhs", which everyone would, then you should write it that way too.

IMO, isn't that mispronouncing it? So you're writing it like you (mis-)pronounce it?

Atakdog,

The "s's" formulation just looks so clunky on the page to me. There are lots of things that are not pronounced the way they're written and I would personally prefer just s-apostrophe as a hard and fast rule.

Well, I guess that's another question. I can tell you that in practice just about everyone pronounced it as three syllables, even those who spelled it with a s-apostrophe.

Except I don't think that it is a hard and fast rule in most style manuals — some use the s's construction all or almost all the time, others pick and choose. About the only cases in which s-apostrophe is almost always used are Jesus' and Moses', which are often listed as special cases; Texans treated Texas' as a special case also.

If we're making a rule I vote that s's isn't clunky so should be not only the default but the rule all the time (even for Jesus and Moses), but I don't know how weird my view of it is.

"does achieve"?

It's the typographical equivalent of shriveled wrinkly nuts and a micropenis.

Actually, I've noticed that my opinion varies with the word. Aesthetically, I prefer William Gaddis's to William Gaddis', for example, but Steve Jobs' to Steve Jobs's. (Not that I'd ever mix formulations in the same piece.) I prefer s' in general.

Yup.

In English we get to choose between "achieves" and "does achieve", even though as a first order thing they're identical. The latter construction puts more emphasis on the fact that action occurs as opposed to what it is, and that's what I wanted — think "No it doesn't." "Oh yes it does."

i was taught that if a proper noun ending with s has only one syllable, then add 's (james's book, keats's poetry); if the word has multiple syllables, then put just the apostrophe (the beatles' discography).

Come to think of it, I think this may be as close to a standard rule as there is for non-journalism writing. (Journalists tend to use apostrophe-s except in the two exceptions I noted earlier.)

Wow, all these posts are surprising me. I always learned the rule was that if the word ending in 's' is singular, then it should be s's. But (cwidt) if the word is plural, then it should be s'.

Ross's monkey.
The monkeys' cage.

Have I been misled this whole time? I have no problem with the s's construction.

It looks like we may have found a question that divides even the nitty regular contributors to this thread (myself obviously included) right down the middle.

O, for want of mid-thread polls...

This says both are acceptable as long as you're consistent (and of course I believe anything I read in comic form):

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

atak,

Other than the odd typo, I go s's with exactly exception: Bayes.

Question for the punctuation gurus: what would be the correct way of adding punctuation to the sentence below?

"Critics that are for brain enhancing drugs like Ronald Bailey the science editor of Reason magazine urge that..."

My best guess: "Critics that are for brain-enhancing drugs, like Ronald Bailey, the science editor of Reason magazine, urge that..." A friend said that "Bailey" should be followed by a semicolon, which seems incorrect to me (and I'm also unsure as to whether brain-enhancing is hyphenated or not and whether "magazine" requires capitalization).

I asked the Grammar Lady a while back about using ' instead of 's, and she replied:

Last two commas are ldo. First one I don't know if it is needed.

Without the first comma it sounds like Bailey is a brain enhancing drug.

"Critics that are for brain enhancing drugs, like Ronald Bailey (the science editor of Reason magazine), urge that..."

Your best guess is correct. Actually, PJ's might be technically stronger, but I've decided I don't like parentheses and em-dashes anymore, so I'd go with yours. Omitting the first comma would be almost as bad as omitting the second and third. The semicolon after "Bailey," to that sentence, would be much like a Sharpie forgotten in someone's ass. "[B]rain-enhancing" is indeed hyphenated. I'd write "Reason" in place of "Reason magazine." "Critics that" should be "Critics who." The first four words of that sentence, in fact, are clunky and could substantially improve with a good rephrasing; even if the reader must understand that we're dealing with "critics," context could convey that and we could start the sentence "Advocates for ... ." I don't believe you'd capitalize "magazine" unless it was part of the title.