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****Note: This post has been certified as apostrophe-free ***
I have seen apostrophes mis-used so often that I am beginning to be numb to this error. Instead of joining the Apostrophe Protection Society (or whatever its called), I have a different proposal. It came to me the other day.
Lets just get rid of the apostrophe.
Yes, yes, I know, it would introduce ambiguities. But to this I say
(1) The apostrophe does not successfully reduce ambiguities as it is used now, primarily because it is mis-used so often that its presence means nothing anymore. It is not safe to assume that if you see one, it is denoting possession, for you may be reading something written by someone who believes it is used for pluralizing. Therefore its role as a clarifier or aid to understanding is lost.
(2) There are plenty of other ambiguities in English which we avoid by understanding the context of what is written. Why not add this (possession vs. plurals) to the list?
I breathlessly await your opinions.
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While its use may be ambiguous at times, its helpful often enough to keep it. Im so used to it
I dont think Id be comfortable without it. Thats it, and whats what.
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A friend and I dis'cus'sed this' very problem s'ome time ago and decided that the only 'solution was' to require that every s' have an apo'strophe adjacent to it. In the ca'se of a double s' it would be permis'sible to put the apos'trophe between them.
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Oh Muse, what has become of thine Art?
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what has become of thine Art?
Last I heard he was heading down to Tucson to escape the winter winds.
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I think wofahulicodoc just looked at his dictionary.
apostrophe
n.
L < Gr apostrophc, a turning away from the audience to address one person < apostrephein < apo3, from + strephein, to turn: see STROPHE6 words addressed to a person or thing, whether absent or present, generally in an exclamatory digression in a speech or literary writing
apostrophic
adj.
a[pos[tro[phe2 7! p9s4tr! fc8
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... and then there's always anastrophe.
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Let no- one demand that we be anastrophe free.
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So what did she win that for?
TEd
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I think wofahulicodoc just looked at his dictionary.
Actually I looked in the dictionary about eleven years ago, when my kid's team couldn't identify the rhetorical device in an "Academic-Olympics"-for-the-tenth-graders contest, and I couldn't either ... now at least I know one such. (Though I'm still not at all clear as to what is a strophe and an antistrophe. They're all Greek to me.)
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I love apostrophes!!  I've a huge appetite for 'em and learnin' when and where to use 'em mo' 'fectively. Conjunctions 'n' possessives give me the thrills o' economy 'n' ownership. I'd be sorry to let 'em go. Cain't imagine the world o' the paragraph without 'em. 'Sides, they be sech l'il Edit: li'l bitty ol' thin's what's represented by such a whopper o' a word. They ain't restricted by region fo' they be country and they be O'Irish 'mongst other thin's. L'il drops o' rain in the landscape o' sentences--that's a l'il Edit: li'l o' what they carryin' out 'cross the page. B'sides: They give the pinky finger a workout. B''t r'gards, W''dwin'
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from Greek strephein, to turn: strophe = chorus turns right. antistrophe = chorus turns left Stanza
means chorus stands still and sings four lines. And for good measure "boustrophedon" means writing
as Hebrew which as did primitive plowing go alternately right and left.
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Oh, thank you, Dr. Bill, for reminding me of that wonderful verse tsuwm posted:
strange new words I relish
like nectar or tonic
I now know my line printer
is boustrophedonic
David P. Stern
Science magazine http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=939
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I now know my line printer
is boustrophedonic
Technically a line printer is neither strophe, antistrophe nor even boustrophe, printing as it does, a whole line all to once going nor right nor left.
And Dub', l'il?
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Boustrophedon == back and forth, the way an ox plows a field (bous = ox): go to end of row, then turn about and make the next row in the opposite direction, then turn back again at end of next row, repeat ad libitum
Hebrew writing == more like a "raster pattern," the sweep signal on a TV screen: every row same direction, get to end and go back to beginning to start next row. But right-to-left instead of the more usual Western left-to-right.
Strophe/antistrophe == turn to right/turn to left. I had made up that it had something to do with the kind of sentiments voiced, but this is so much simpler and more elegant. A Classical antecedent of the later form "On the one hand blahblahblah, but on the other hand moreblahblahblah ...", perhaps?
And stanza == standing still while declaiming four lines. How inevitable! Why didn't I think of that a long time ago!
Maybe I should stop making up "plausible explanations." :-) (Oops, gave myself away, of course I meant "figuring things out for myself" !)
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Thanks, Faldage.
I do love apostrophes and enjoy fine-tunin' 'em...so I should have written li'l and happily stand kerrected.
WW
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Dunno bout no Hebrews but the Greeks used to write like that.
Start writing one way keep going till you run out of line
tuo nur uoy llit yaw rehto eht etirw dna dnuora nrut neht
of space that way and back you go like the first line.
Only they turned the letters around too, so a b in one direction would be a d in the other a p one way a q the other. Now that I think about it I do remember reading the ancient Semites did it too. They settled down on right to left and the Greeks settled down on left to right.
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Start writing one way keep going till you run out of line
tuo nur uoy llit yaw rehto eht etirw dna dnuora nrut neht
of space that way and back you go like the first line.
that was cool...
.taht fo erom od s'tel
[elims]
formerly known as etaoin...
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And it's only marginally more difficult
sretnirp emoS .yaw lamron eht gnipyt naht
*did print that way, spooling up a line
neve na erew ti fi ti gnisrever neht dna
numbered line.
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There is the difficulty of deciding where
hcihw dna neppah lliw skaerb enil eht
words to use on which line. but it does cause one(at least
[kniw] !aedi doog a eb thgim hcihw ,daeha kniht ot (em
(but which way should those ellipses be?) hmmm...
formerly known as etaoin...
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Won't anyone correct my error is saying Hebrew is written in boustrophedon? I remember
seeing an article in Scientific American many years ago about Linear B or one of those
predecessors of Attic Greek, but can't remember correct name.
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What I do is type the first line in normally
retcarahc sa enil dnoces eht epyt neht dna
left-arrow character left-arrow, etc.
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yes, the old dot matrix printer did that
retcarahc elohw a detelpmoc daeh tnirp eht ecnis
and move as it printed, it printed one line
enil txen eht dna tfel ot thgir
left to right.
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ah, I'll have to try that. it makes sense! dluow taht tpircselppA elttil a nees evah I erehwemos turn a sentence backwards automatically. hmmm, I aedi yek worra ehT. ti dnif dluoc I fi ees dluohs works pretty well, though.
formerly known as etaoin...
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you might also experiment with text as an image
egami rorrim ro esrevni na sah erawtfos egami tsom ecnis
feature.. each line has to be a text box, and i suspect that you couldn't post them here.
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After writing from right to left, try pronouncing from left to right.
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freedomscientific.com, will let you download a trial version of JAWS, there assistive software for the blind.
it has a speach synthisizer built in, and will 'read'and articulte text... so you can have a professional reader read it!
the demo even lets you change the voice, from male to female, with several variations (Rocco, with an english accent is quite nice.) and yes, you can have US english (zee) or UK english (zed) (or sked ule vs shed ule for schedule)
the demo only works for a half hour at a time, it resets everytime you turn your computer on or off..
its is Windows driven, but they might have a Mac OS version too..
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you can set your mac to read all text. you don't need any additional software. it's built in.
formerly known as etaoin...
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old hand
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Back to the original post hi Bean! - I was surprised and dismayed, when I travelled in Australia, to discover that the apostrophe is nearly extinct there. Every time something was named for someone, there was no apostrophe to indicate the possessive; eg, Ayers Rock should really be Ayer's Rock, since it's named (by whities, anyway) for some feller whose last name was Ayer. (Similarly, his house in Adelaide is called Ayers House.)
Actually Ayers Rock *should* be Uluru - and increasingly, it is.
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Pooh-Bah
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Perhaps the apostrophe shortage down under is related to the famous period shortage about which Steve Martin wrote so eloquently in The New Yorker some while back...
Times Roman Font Announces Shortage of Periods
by Steve Martin
Representatives of the popular Times Roman font recently announced a shortage of periods and have offered substitutes - such as inverted commas, exclamation marks, and semicolons - until the crisis is overcome by people such as yourself, who through creative management of surplus punctuation can perhaps allay the constant demand for periods, whose heavy usage in the last ten years (not only in English but in virtually every language in the world) is creating a burden on writers everywhere, thus generating a litany of comments, among them: "What the hell am I supposed to do without my periods? How am I going to write? Isn't this a terrible disaster? Are they crazy? Won't this just lead to misuse of other, less interesting punctuation???"
"Most vulnerable are writers who work in short, choppy sentences," said a spokesperson for Times Roman, who continued, "We are trying to remedy the situation and have suggested alternatives, like umlauts, since we have plenty of umlauts - and, in fact, have more umlauts than we could possibly use in a lifetime! Don't forget, umlauts can really spice up a page with their delicate symmetry - resting often midway in a word, letters spilling on either side - and not only indicate the pronunciation of a word but also contribute to a writer's greater glory because they're fancy, not to mention that they even look like periods, indeed, are indistinguishable from periods, and will lead casual readers to believe that the article actually contains periods!"
Bobby Brainard, a writer living in an isolated cabin in Montana - who is, in fact, the only writer living in an isolated cabin in Montana who is not insane - is facing a dilemma typical of writers across the nation: "I have a sentence that has just got to be stopped; it is currently sixteen pages long and is edging out the front door and is now so lumbering I'm starting to worry that one period alone won't be enough - that I'll need at least two to finally kill it off - and if that doesn't work, I've ordered an elephant gun from Jessie's, and if I don't get some periods fast I'm going to have to use ..." The magazine International Hebrew has offered this emergency statement: "We currently have an oversupply of backwards periods and will be happy to send some to Mister Brainard or anyone else facing a crisis!" .period backwards the in slip you while moment a for way other the look to sentence the getting is trick only The
The general concern of writers is summed up by this brief telegram:
Period shortage mustn't continue stop
Stop-stoppage must come to full stop stop
We must resolve it and stop the stop-stoppage stop
Yours truly,
Tom Stoppard
Needless to say, there has been an increasing pressure on the ellipsis...
"I assure you," said the spokesperson, "I assure you the ellipsis is not - repeat, is not - just three periods strung together, and, although certain writers have plundered the ellipsis for its dots, such dots are deeply inelegant and ineffective when used to stop a sentence! An ellipsis point is too weak to stop a modern sentence, which would require at least two ellipsis points, leaving the third dot to stand alone pointlessly - and, indeed, two periods at the end of a sentence would look like a typo, comprende? And why is Times Roman so important? Why can't writers employ some of our other, lesser-used fonts, such as Goofy Deluxe, Namby Pamby Extra Narrow, or Gone Fishin'?"
In fact, there is movement toward alternate punctuation; consider the New Punctuation and Suicide Cult in Southern Texas, whose credo is "Why not try some new and different kinds of punctuation and then kill ourselves?" Notice how these knotty epigrams from Shakespeare are easily unravelled:
Every cloud engenders not a storm :)
Horatio, I am dead :(
Remembering the Albertus Extra Bold asterisk embargo of several years back, one hopes the crisis is solved quickly, because a life of exclamation marks, no matter how superficially exciting, is no life at all! There are, of course, many other fonts one could use if the crisis continues, but, frankly, which would you rather be faced with - Namby Pamby Extra Narrow or the bosomy sexuality of Times Roman? The shortage itself may be a useful one, provided it's over quickly, for it has made at least this author appreciate and value his one spare period, and it is with great respect that I use it now.
[from The New Yorker, probably in 1997]
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Period shortage leads to pregnant pause.
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wwh, what sad confinement we'd have without your input.
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Everyone saw, I trust, that Mr Martin wrote the whole period piece using only one, and that one (appropriately enough) at the very end!
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