Correct Grammar (Geoff in particular)

[Joe Bento]

I'm American.  I attended a Catholic primary school in California.
Some of the examples you quoted would have earned us a slap across the
knuckles with a ruler.

Here's how I learned: 

"Boy's club" is singular possessive pertaining to one boy - it's his club.

"Boys' club" is plural possessive  - a club for a group of boys.

Proper names ending in "s" are more troublesome.  I believe either way
is acceptable, though the Nuns at St Matthews preferred the possessive
of proper names ending in s as "ess apostrophe" - James' car, etc.

Interestingly, as for the minor differences in UK vs US spelling, the
UK spellcheck of MS-Word will accept either US or UK spelling.  The US
spellcheck will point out an error for "colour," "realise," etc.

Things must be getting confusing across the pond though.  You go to
the theatre for a play, and they hand you a programme.  What program
created the programme? (Though with different spellings, one is not
confused as to the meaning)

I often notice "Britspeak" used in American advertising when they want
to portray a degree of sophistication.  I doubt the English resort to
the same.



--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister"
<gbannister10 at a...> wrote:
> 
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "sandra87b" <sandra87b at y...> 
> wrote:
> 
> Geoff:
> On reflection, perhaps I do use more commas with "which" than I 
> realised though, as I said previously, I still delete them 
> after "and" and "but".
> 
> Sandra:
> > Hello Geoff,
> > What a really good answer - I learned a thing or two from reading 
> it!
> > There's a book called 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' which is very helpful 
> and entertaining, 
> > and I would suggest that anyone ought to take a good look through 
> it (unless this 
> > has already been mentioned).
> > 
> > Long live the pedants!
> 
> Geoff:
> Yes, this book got quite a lot of air time on TV programmes.
> 
> Another you would probably like is one written by John Humphrys, who 
> is a very well-known presenter of TV news programmes.
> 
> His book is called
> "Lost for Words" and sub-titled "The mangling and manipulating of the 
> English language"
> 
> It's published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, price £14.99 and ISBN 
> 0 340 83658 X.
> 
> In message 26677 Storm wrote:
> 
> > LOL this is great. I want to join the TFS support group too!
> 
> > What about Annemehr's example of:
> > "the students' bags where all in the hall way"
> 
> > Or does (horror) the CMS call for:
> > "the students's bags where all in the hall way"
> 
> Geoff:
> Being serious, this question of adding an extra 's is Uk versus US 
> usage. In English, the correct version would be accepted as James' 
> and Sirius' etc. although many people would add an 's.
> 
> In your "students's" example above, that wouldn't happen in UK-speak 
> because this only arises with proper nouns. My church has a Boys' 
> Club and a Girls' Brigade for example. Although we usually capitalise 
> them, they're not technically proper nouns.
>  
> Geoff (who was tort to speak proper and naicely as a nipper)