#2 as said. Exciting!

Saw this on a girl's Facebook today:

"I like cats, the 1960's and grammar. "

Oh yeah? Maybe if you liked grammar a little more you'd also like the 1960s.

Maybe the comma was for dramatic effect, and she likes cats from the 1960s.

It was the apostrophe I objected to, not the comma.

Doesn't she need a comma after "1960's" anyway?

I'm always confused whether or not to put a comma after the last word before and when I'm listing items.

Yeah, I understand that. I was saying that the cats are from the 1960s. Like, the 1960's was a correct usage of the possessive.

<ubernit>
Actually she'd need to be saying the cats are just from the year 1960, not the whole decade.
</ubernit>

I prefer a serial comma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

Excellent point. Also, isn't 95% of this theard about being an ubernit, anyway?

hahaha nh

This particular use of the apostrophe is not wrong, just old fashioned. There used to be a rule that writers should use always use apostrophes whenever the plural -s was added to something not conventionally pluralized. That rule is still sometimes used: it can be helpful in writing sentences such as: "He got mostly A's but a few B's" (because writing "He got mostly As" can confuse the reader). That use of the apostrophe was extended to cover decades and eras: 1950's, the 60's, the 1800's, etc. But that apostrophe is rapidly falling away, though I still see it newspapers. Some old handbooks also applied this to the pluralizing of proper names: "I am going to see the Smith's"--but I think that was always a bad idea as very likely to confuse.
That said, the strange use of unnecessary apostrophes is everywhere, as this thread has only too well recorded. I had a student once tell me she threw in lots of apostrophe because she thought it made her writing "look more flourishing." It took me a minute to realize that she was misusing a word, and what she meant that for her the apostrophe was a flourish! (Her dream in life, appropriately I guess, was to be a fashion designer, but that was the first time I'd encountered the theory of punctuation as decoration ...)

Has anyone in this monstrous thread mentioned how the word "genius" is the most variably misspelled word on the whole internetz?

Sample from personal experience:
- genious
- genuis
- geenius
- ginius
- genios

Another "learned man" speaks:

May 18, 4:11 AM (ET)

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that he is "toxic" to the Obama administration and that the president "threw me under the bus."

In his strongest language to date about the administration's 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.

"No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am 'toxic' in terms of the Obama administration," Wright wrote the president of Africa 6000 International earlier this year.

"I am 'radioactive,' Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!" he wrote. "Any advice that I offer is going to be taken as something to be avoided. Please understand that!"

i don't think that's particularly incorrect. i understand that he is grossly mis-using literally, but he's trying to indicate that his being 'thrown under the bus' is more than just a saying for him. although a better way to express this would be 'actually' or 'really'; but it would not be an actual or real event!

Meh...I think any suggestion that the "throwing" actually happened is bad. Better to extend the metaphor instead, like say "he didn't just throw me under the bus, he jumped in the driver's seat and ran over me personally".

Huh, that's weird. My reading of that quote is that Obama physically threw him under a bus.

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bump

He may be trying to indicate this (though it's almost certainly false), but he has failed to do so. What he has indicated is that Obama picked him up and cast his body under a large, wheeled passenger vehicle.

Sometimes the quotes are unintentionally appropriate:

^lol

Thank you, W0X0F

That's just too good to be real.

hahahah
A+

hi everyone. i have a question:

"I need to talk to Officer White."

or

"I need to talk to officer White."

Officer White is just and ordinary police officer.

I imagine it's Officer. If you're going to use the title to refer to them, then you would capitalize it.

I am going to see Principal Jameson.

I am going to see Teacher Jameson.

The difference is that one of those we use, and the other we don't.