Someone shared a dumb photo on facebook claiming that people are getting semicolon tattoos to show solidarity with people who have attempted suicide, because a semicolon represents a time you could have ended a sentence but chose not to. It reminded me of this thread and I laughed.

In the UK this is your tutor, or form tutor.

My girlfriend showed me this sentence today and I thought I'd post it here to get some in-depth analysis on why it is bugging me so much. It's from Vogue.

"We are in a part of Canada known as cottage country, for more than a century the weekend colony of moneyed Torontonians who built clapboard homes on the shoreline and painted them so dark they all but disappeared into the pines."

The best I could come up with to salvage it was to add a "where" after the comma and "vacation" at the very end.

What are we dealing with here?

Holy crap, how did that get past the editing process

The meat of the sentence, blued-up here, is a simple clause and an appositive. A relatively long adverbial phrase is lodged awkwardly between them, however. Therefore what follows the first clause doesn't immediately register as something that's going to be an appositive, maybe until you get all the way to the "who" -- and you end up getting confused. In that sense, it's sort of a garden path sentence. The appositive is quite the mouthful too.

An improvement would be: "We are in a part of Canada known as cottage country, which, for more than a century, was the weekend colony of moneyed Torontonians who built clapboard homes on the shoreline. They painted them so dark they all but disappeared into the pines."

Sometimes less isn't more! It's up to the writer to decide whether the very last thought deserves the extra cadential magnitude it gets by being split off into its own sentence. I think it does, whereas, for contrast, a sentence-concluding "and drank wine all day and night" would sound somewhat odd on its own.

Good analysis. I actually think the sentence flows well enough that it doesn't suffer from garden path effect (for me), but judging from other's reactions it apparently did have that effect. I agree the final clause about painting is piling on a bit much for one sentence, however.

Thank you Rei,

That cleared it up for us. As much as we'd hoped, anyway!

Concert stopped to correct fanatic's "Your so nice" sign!

I think I have been typing this wrong lately, please correct me if so. Is it written "sit and go's" or sit and gos" without the apostrophe? I have been using an apostrophe, but it just doesn't feel right. Also, would it be proper to substitute the word "and" with the symbol &? Thanks guys, I have learned a lot from this thread.

No apostrophe

I would use the ampersand as it is an accepted, informal title.

Also, since it is informal, if you omit the ampersand it is likely to require hyphens; and they are more annoying than finding the ampersand on my phone.

Never use an apostrophe to form the plural of a word. It can sometimes be used for the plural of an acronym or abbreviation.

SNG's

And you believe this example contradicts my statement?

Thank you for the information, I have been writing it wrong the entire time.

Non native speaker here.

So, as far as I know, the possessive apostrophe of someone whose name ends on "s" is put after the "s" without another "s" following it.

How about names that end in "z" or "x", though?

I just made the following post in the "Computer and Technical Help" subforum, and settled for the possessive of "Linux" in the same way as I would for "Thomas". Using the possessives of "Linux" and "Windows" in one post got me thinking about that, so I came to you guys.

Correct or incorrect?

So for starters, dropping the s for a word ending in z or x is always just grammatically wrong.

But words ending "s" are also more complicated than that. Dropping the s after the apostrophe or retaining it are both grammatically OK. There's no hard and fast rule. For the rest of the post, when I say "wrong" I mean I think that usage would identify you as a non-native speaker, when I say "more correct" or similar I mean there's a usage that sounds more natural to me, but I might hear either from a native speaker.

In spoken language, it is rare to drop the s. For instance, "Thomas' car" in spoken language is definitely wrong because "Thomas's car" rolls off the tongue no problem. The s is dropped only when things become awkward to say. One that comes up quite often is Jesus - try saying "We should follow Jesus' example" and "We should follow Jesus's example" out loud. Including the s makes the sentence a borderline tonguetwister, so the first one is more correct. Nonetheless, in casual speech I'd still expect to hear the s left in a ton. The chances of the s being dropped increase the more formal the speech gets and the more educated the speaker. Dropping the s is still awkward enough though that many speakers would prefer to dodge the problem entirely and use a formulation like "the example of Jesus" or "Christ's example".

In written English, the s can be dropped more frequently thanks to the apostrophe making it clear what the intent is, but it is still often left in. "Thomas's car" looks more correct to me than "Thomas' car". "Chris' car" is flat out wrong. Again, even though it's written, the reason is how it sounds when spoken. With the s included, "Chrisescar" flows off the tongue and is readily understood. If you drop the s, you need a full vocal stop, like "Chris [stop] car", since "Chriscar" will be incomprehensible.

My advice would be to not drop the s unless you are sure it's correct. Including the s when it's better to drop it sounds a bit awkward/uneducated at worst, whereas dropping it when it should have been included can sound totally wrong.

Wow, thanks for the thorough reply, mate. I guess I'll keep the "s" on every possessive, then, from now on.

However, I don't quite understand the difference between Thomas and Chris in your example. What is more comprehensible about "Thomascar" (as opposed to "Thomasescar") that is incomprehensible in "Chriscar"?

When the terminating s is used to form a plural, you never add another s after the possessive apostrophe.

But when a singular word ends with s, the possessive form is a matter of style as mentioned in the post above. Various style guides differ. A good rule of thumb is write it the way you say it.

That said, it is technically never a grammatical error to add apostrophe-s to any singular non-proper noun, even one that ends with s.

Had to think about that a bit. The reason is syllable emphasis. "Thomascar" is pronounced "THOMasCAR", which allows the car syllable to be well defined without needing to pause. "Chriscar" has to be pronounced "CHRIS-CAR".

Note, I still think "Thomas' car" is wrong in spoken language and awkward in print, it's just not so jarringly wrong as "Chris' car".

Emphasis in English can be pretty subtle. For instance, the phrase "a moving van" has either the specific meaning "a van used for moving furniture etc" or it could just mean "a van that is in motion". The two can be distinguished purely on syllable emphasis:

The first meaning: "a moving van" or "a MOving van"
The second meaning: "a moving VAN" or "a MOving VAN"

The more the "van" syllable is emphasised, the more definite the speaker is being that it is a thing in itself and not to be grouped together with the previous word.

That's the reason, btw, that "Chris' car" is so hard to pronounce. It's essential to firmly emphasise the "car" syllable in order to make clear that the first word is just a modifier of some kind - an adjective or a possessive. Pronouncing it "CHRIScar" or "chriscar" would leave the speaker wondering wtf a chriscar is.

Also in the instance I gave where the s should be dropped, emphasising like this: "JEsus' exAMple" with firm emphasis on the "example" is essential. "We must follow Jesus' example" pronounced flat, with no emphasis, will be understood of course but it marks the speaker as non-native. It kind of sounds like there is some guy (or vehicle or boat or something) called Jesus Example that we need to chase after.

Yeah, makes perfect sense now.

Thanks to you both.

Just to clarify the plural possessive:

is incorrect, and should be:

?

The second one is correct.

To clarify, a plural possessive never gets a second s on the end, regardless of whether it is a proper noun or not. Singular possessives that end in s sometimes get another s after the apostrophe.

Thanks a lot.