John H. Robinson, IV([EMAIL PROTECTED])@Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 08:10:26PM -0700: > Todd Walton wrote: > > On 9/5/06, Todd Walton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >On 9/5/06, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> Barnes's book > > >> Barnes' book > > >> > > >> Equally correct. > > > > > >No they're not. > > > > I'm sorry. I should have said: I don't believe you're right, Lan. My > > belief is based on grammar school teachings and the bloggings of > > linguists. > > I bet these linguists also say split infinitives are bad. Tell them that > english is not latin.
Thi's linguist think's arguing about apostrophe's is a waste of hi's time. I've never actually met a linguist who protests split infinitives, or the like. Usually it's the over-correcting teachers that do that. I wasn't going to post to this thread at all, but for the fact that the reputation of linguists had been maligned! As for keeping "its" and "it's" straight, I generally think of it this way: "his" and "hers" and "yours" are posessive pronouns, and none of them have apostrophes, so the posessive pronoun "its" doesn't either. Contractions, on the other hand, always use apostrophes. ;-) Wade Curry -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
