Eric Kow writes: > Folks, I think this is one of those places where English punctuation > rules aren't widely agreed on: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe#Singular_nouns_ending_with_an_.22s.22_or_.22z.22_sound
I think it's pretty clear from that article that the rule that was taught to me in New York in the 1960s and was taught to my daughter in California in 2008 *is* the widely agreed standard, and the apparent balance in presentation of the alternative is basically an artifact of Wikipedia's editorial enforcment of the NPOV. In any case, we're doing marketing. To most educated native speakers I know (admittedly, that sample is overwhelmingly populated with professional academics, mostly over the age of 40), the partially simplified rule[1] looks lazy and unprofessional. I suppose you could retort that to people on the other side of the debate it looks like pedantic adherence to arbitrary rules in a corner case. To which I reply, "isn't 'getting it right even when it's inconvenient' what we stand for?!" I think it's better to lean toward pedantry. Footnotes: [1] Fully simplified, it would be 'add "'s" to form the possessive'. _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
