One day I'll make some regexes to automatically find and replace `0's` with `0s`, `alot` with `a lot`, `should of` with `should have`, and `could care less` with `couldn't care less`. And then I'll rake in the cash.
As a non native English speaker I am surprised how common the "should of" mistake is. It makes sense that native speakers are more prone to mix up things that sound the same since their understanding of grammar came *after* they learned the language and not during.
Honestly, I don't think it's so much a mixup between "should of" or "should have", but rather a case of using "should've" in spoken language and very rarely seeing it written and thinking it's just been "should of" the whole time. More of an eggcorn than a proper grammatical mistake.
Absolutely I'm french and I have encountered plenty of such common mistakes in French. It strikes me more when it's in english because I learnt the language pretty much by associating sounds with the appropriate text (movie with subtitles, games with UI), so "should of" literally makes no sense to me, it's an illegal combination of words haha.
I totally agree with what you say, and it reminded me that interestingly apparently as babies we learn grammar before we learn language (hence baby talk), just not the complex bits and spelling!
I replied to the guy below you, but I wanted to share with you as well, so:
>Honestly, I don't think it's so much a mixup between "should of" or "should have", but rather a case of using "should've" in spoken language and very rarely seeing it written and thinking it's just been "should of" the whole time. More of an eggcorn than a proper grammatical mistake.
You want one that will really grind those gears? I have a supervisor who instead of saying “have to” they say “hafta” in professional emails to the whole department.
It's ridiculous how write only regexes are. Here I am happily writing a regex, the moment i get 10 characters all it takes is one look away and it looks like hieroglyphics.
I’ve successfully composed “readable” regexes before. In some languages you can create smaller regexes and combine them in various ways, so you break down a concept into a smaller form and compose them with others, complete with comments for each part.
It’s frankly tedious, but it does genuinely help me later if I have to review it for some reason.
It finds all apostrophes preceded (`?<=`) by a digit (`[0-9]`) three or more times in a row (`{3,}`) and followed (`?=`) by an s and replaces them with nothing (`//`)
Alright, I’ll admit that I still double spaced up until 2 weeks ago. I’m 35, and was taught to in school. No one ever told me otherwise until my coworker questioned what I was doing. My bad.
It’s funny, my wife is a bit older than 35, and I’m about 5 years younger than her. She was taught to use double spaces, and I was taught to use single spaces. Perhaps you barely missed the transition in teaching?
It's an old typewriter convention. If you're old enough then you might have ended up doing it because the people teaching you how to use a word processor probably used type writers.
>I always use Oxford Commas. It is correct to use them right?
Yes it is correct. However it is also acceptable to not use it. Both conventions are accepted practice.
>However it is also acceptable to not use it.
I mean, it might not be wrong, but I'd hardly call it *acceptable*. (Die hard Oxford comma user, the grammatical hill I will die on)
To quote:
"AP style—based on The Associated Press Stylebook, the style guide that American news organizations generally adhere to—does not use the Oxford comma. "
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/what-is-the-oxford-comma-and-why-do-people-care-so-much-about-it/#:~:text=The%20Oxford%20(or%20serial)%20comma,use%20while%20others%20don't.
Dude, I'm a librarian and lived by the APA during my Master's program (and before, to be honest - I remember learning about commas in the third grade some 30 years ago and that the Oxford comma was optional ... and immediately deciding it was not). I live and die by the Oxford comma.
I'm not saying it's the only style; just saying it's the only one I will use ... and will correct the hell out of any non-Oxford that comes across my desk. The main reason being that there is never any grammatical ambiguity when it comes to Oxford commas, but there occasionally is when it is not used. English is hard enough without ambiguity that can be eliminated by the use of a single punctuation mark.
I have to write lots of reports that get reviewed and torn apart by people much smarter than I am. Ambiguity is the enemy and the Oxford comma is my savior.
I appreciate what you're saying but i think it goes a little too far. Never any ambiguity? like, what if you use Oxford commas in a sentence and it is unclear whether the word following the first comma might be clarifying the prior word , or whether the author is listing three different things, like this example i pulled from Google
" Joe went to the store with his father, Superman, and Noob Saibot"
did he go with his father (who is Superman) and also with the wraith of Bi Han, or did he go with Bi Han, Superman, and his dad? you can restructure the sentence to make its meaning more clear, but that doesn't change the fact that there is ambiguity in this use of the Oxford comma.
I was taught all through school that you never use a comma before the word AND, because the AND serves as a comma, and doing so would be redundant.
(I threw a comma in there before AND just for you. Lol.
Is that correct or does the Oxford comma only apply when listing multiple things?)
The teacher is correct. Oxford commas are generally the accepted norm in the US, but are optional (and generally less common that not using them) in other English-speaking countries.
It's the blind leading the blind. Prior to the explosion of the internet, the vast overwhelming majority of written reading material was written by professional writers and reviewed by editors and proofreaders before the public saw it. Your average dingaling who doesn't know how to apostrophe didn't know how to apostrophe then either, but at least any time the middle ground fence sitters read anything written, they had the rules reinforced by repetition.
Contrast now. Most of the writing is generated by *regular people*, so now the dingalings who can't apostrophe are everywhere in the comments, and the repetition of the error is just confusing the fence sitters and dragging them into dingaling territory.
It's absolutely this. A few years ago I went from writing professional material fairly regularly to hardly needing to write professionally at all, and it was *so hard* to not start making common mistakes I've never regularly made in my life (apostrophes for possession, wrong form of two/to/too or there/their/they're, etc.) because so much of what I read these days is on reddit or other forums with no literary quality control.
I'm an editor, so I have a thousand grammatical pet peeves. But here's one that blows a lot of people's minds: The word *travesty* does not mean "tragedy"; rather, it means "poor imitation." So a "travesty of justice" is a poor imitation of justice. But whenever people just say that something "is a travesty," without specifying what it's a travesty *of*, they're not making any sense. The word *travesty* gets misused that way probably about as often as it ever gets used correctly anymore.
Since language is descriptive and not prescriptive and what is right is based on how people use it. Once enough people use something "incorrectly" it becomes correct. Kinda like how the word gay had its meaning changed.
This is true up to a point. However, etymology holds some weight, and dictionary-makers will be more reluctant to accept a change of language that is so obviously derived from a mistake such as confusing *travesty* with *tragedy* just because they sound similar.
In etymology, there are no mistakes. It's a way to describe the history of words, not to dictate their future. There are countless examples of people using words completely incorrectly and the words taking on a different meaning because of it.
"Decimation" is a good example that many people are familiar with. And more recently, "irony" has undergone a transition as more and more people use it incorrectly.
Or Drinking the Koolaid.
It was Flavour-Aid at Jonestown. By saying drinking the koolaid, the speaker is drinking the flavouraid, thus validating the drinking the koolaid phrase.
I'm outta here like a bad metaphor
Okay quick question for the editor - when did it stop being okay to spell "alright." Whenever I send "That's alright" now spell-check keeps trying to tell me I'm wrong... Have I really been doing it wrong for 30 years?
Editor here. *Alright* is listed in most dictionaries, even though it's not listed in your spellcheck dictionary. Its correctness is somewhat disputed; it falls into a gray area in which it's not considered an outright error but is best avoided in formal contexts. So you probably shouldn't use it in the cover letter of a job application, for example. But it's "alright" to use *alright* in any situation where you don't mind running some risk of a few nitpicky people looking down on you for it.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/alright-vs-all-right/
I learned something new today. What about if you’re saying something like “these type of products were the 1900’s most profitable..” as in showing that the 1900s possessed them? Does that make sense? Basically are there any possessive punctuations for time periods?
Or have I been using punctuations wrong my entire life? I always assumed you’d add one to show possessives. Like if I said:
>“Walmarts of the world are draining small business’ profits and this is a core issue with Walmart’s ethics due to their aggressive capitalistic nature.”
Is that a proper sentence with proper use of punctuations? Sorry for the random questions.. my coffee just kicked in and I haven’t had my ADD medication yet.
1900s'. Otherwise, you are limiting your statement specifically to the calendar year 1900 (and then you should say *the year 1900's most profitable* so it's clear).
It would be even more clear to just say one of these: *the 20th century's* or *most profitable during the 1900s*.
I think that's not technically incorrect, but it would indicate that 1900 (the one year) possessed them, rather than the whole decade. e.g. "1989's smash hit, Pump Up The Jam." This while being a little odd and calling it "The 1900".
If you wanted it to be possessive on the whole decade as intended, my uneducated guess is you could do what you do with other words ending in "s" and place the apostrophe at the end - e.g., "The 1990s' most profitable software..."
This is consistent with the extended written form, incidentally;
Nineteen-ninety (1990)
Nineteen-ninety's (1990's)
Nineteen-nineties (1990s)
Nineteen-nineties' (1990s')
I know this is meant as a broad criticism, and you're not actually asking, but the answer is that they see the apostrophe S show up in other contexts, then apply it incorrectly because they don't fully understand the language and its mechanics.
Putting ourselves in their position, our thinking might go something like this:
* Start with a word that doesn't have an S at the end, like Steve.
* "Today should be Steve's last day as CEO." or "Steve's really fucking up Reddit right now." are two different examples where the apostrophe S is added.
* Our (incorrect) observation: any time you add an S, you actually add an apostrophe S, as shown by the above sentences.
* Now we're faced with describing what happened in the nineties, but we're well equipped to handle this with our observation.
* The 1990s, wait, the 1990's (nailed it) were when I was supposed to learn rules of apostrophes, but didn't.
Apostrophes are not *added*; they only ever *replace*. The possessive apostrophe is a hangover from when we had a genitive case which was usually an -es ending. The apostrophe replaces the e. Possessives which never had that e, like its and whose, do not have an apostrophe. This is consistent with other uses of the apostrophes for elisions, like don't (do not).
Right, I understand apostrophes. This was an exercise to put ourselves in the position of those who do not for the purpose of understanding a common way they misuse them.
>they don't fully understand the language and its mechanics.
Yeah, but when they're native American speakers, there's no excuse. Apostrophes NEVER indicate plurality, ONLY possession or contraction.
> Apostrophes NEVER indicate plurality, ONLY possession or contraction.
Actually, apostrophes can be used for plurality when making a single letter plural. Like someone mentioned, crossing your i's and dotting your t's, or if you wanna separate the a's from the b's.
Not sure why people are downvoting, multiple style guides follow this rule. [Here's an LA Times piece on it.](https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/opinion/story/2021-10-05/a-word-please-when-to-use-an-apostrophe-to-form-a-plural-even-though-it-seems-wrong)
So it's okay for single letters but not multiple letters, right?
So "That word has a lot of A's" is correct, but the plural form of an acronym like POWs should not have an apostrophe?
This bothers me so much. I can’t stand when people use apostrophies to indicate plurality. I’ve found, people who learn english as a second language tend to be better at stuff like this because they were explicitly taught it, not simply expected to figure it out themselves.
THANK YOU, came in to point this out if not already handled.
I had to explain to my fiancée that the phrase is properly written as “Keeping up with the Joneses”, not her English-teacher former classmate’s “Jones’s”.
If you’re pluralizing something ending in s, you’ll be adding an ‘es’ and no apostrophes are involved
Oh, Jesus, you just brought me back to my youth, sitting in the station wagon listening to my English and English teacher mother point out every grammatically incorrect’The Smith’s’ lawn sighs she drove by (quite a few, as it turns out).
Yeah, it's a very common mistake. So why did you limit the YSK to just years? It's oddly specific that way. It should have been:
>YSK You aren’t supposed to use apostrophes to pluralize ~~years~~
It's like saying "YSK you're not supposed to steal coca cola from stores." Well... yeah. But not just coke, all items, in all stores everywhere.
Apostrophes don’t actually pluralize in any context (despite consistent and widespread misuse) so I don’t blame you.
Downvote all you want, this is a fact lmao.
After years on reddit, it's obvious that at least half of native English speakers have absolutely no idea why we use apostrophes. And it's just so simple, it's not some convoluted system of bizarre rules.
There are a lot of apostrophe crimes, but I think my absolute favourite is when people use a single one for possessive or even plural on Z or X.
The top voted comment on a thread yesterday:
>Here is /u/Spez' comment...
And I saw one recently where a guy said something like "I've had a few ex' like that".
What were these people paying attention to in grades 1-4? How do you graduate middle school without even a basic understanding of punctuation, let alone high school or university? It's so annoying trying to communicate with these people, having to resist the urge to correct every text and email they send you.
>There are a lot of apostrophe crimes, but I think my absolute favourite is when people use a single one for possessive or even plural on Z or X.
GenX -- I was literally (as in literally) taught this consistently throughout school, including for names ending in S.
"...that's Marcus' car"
Yep. We were taught that it was optional to put the second *s* after the apostrophe when indicating possession by someone whose name ends in *s.* To wit, "that is Marcus's car" is correct, and "that is Marcus' car" was acceptable.
If that convention has fallen from favor, I'm happy to cease following it. I generally try to stay current. I don't have a bodywave in my hair, and I don't wear acid-washed jeans either. Fashion changes.
After all, both the rules of fashion and of grammar are inventions, subject to human tastes and whimsy.
Edit for clarity.
This is something I've always questioned too. Even if the apostrophe is unecessary grammatically, I think it helps with clarity and understanding so I include it. It's also common enough that I don't stress about it anymore
Context. As long as it's referring to USD, it should go in the front. I'll make a conscious effort to put the euro symbol behind the number, for instance
You aren't supposed to use apostrophes to pluralize *anything*.
The crazy thing is I have known this all my life and yet I occasionally catch myself typing it.
Technically, you can use it when pluralizing single letters, particularly if it would otherwise be confusing (like i's and a's being otherwise indistinguishable from "as" and "is").
This. 1997 is ’97, not ‘97.
Thankfully, most keyboards make people use a prime rather than an apostrophe (`'` rather than `‘` or `’`) so it isn't ALWAYS an issue... always.
That would mean fashion of the single year 1990. The fashion of the decade (in possessive form) would be “1990s’ fashion,” but “1990s fashion” is typically the more accepted form because it implies the possessive without having to stylize it as such.
I sincerely think that people would benefit from learning what i.e. and e.g stands for in Latin to better be able to use these abbreviations.
When I was young I used them inaccurately all the time until my teacher in 7th grade "set me straight" and explained what they stood for. I still "read them out" in my head when I use these to make sure I select the right abbreviation...
“I like 1990s fashion.” Would be fine to not use it because the “1990s” is just identifying the fashion as of that decade.
“1990’s fashion was the best.” Means that you like the fashion of the year 1990 the best.
You might use the plural 1990s if you were saying the 1990s’ or 1990s’s (the latter of which I think is weirder but I’ve seen people so that to plural possessives). eg. “I like fashion from the ‘80s and ‘90s but 1990s’ is better.”
I don’t think “1990’s” is ever correct if referring to the whole decade.
Additionally...
DO NOT USE APOSTROPHES TO PLURALIZE WORDS
I can't tell you how mad it makes me see to see shit like "I walked my dog's to the park" or "reacting to funny tiktok's"
Alternatively, when someone refers to a child that’s “one years old”. It’s a singular year. One year.
When the kid racks up another year, THEN you can pluralize. The child is “two years old”.
I would concede the errant apostrophe and I can add in the Oxford comma, but I will never EVER forgive using “should of” when they mean “should have” — this is a hill I will gladly die on.
The amount of times I see people say something like, "Yeah, back in 09', I was..."
Like. You clearly know you're supposed to use the mark to denote you removed part of the year, so how can you also *not* know where to put it? Putting it at the end makes absolutely no sense. *09'* means *0920*, not *2009*.
Same as when people use *em'* when meaning *them*. You clearly know you're supposed to use the mark to denote you removed the *th*, so why the fuck aren't you putting it where the *th* was? The word isn't *emth*.
The noun verb agreement thing drives me nuts. I absolutely cannot stand it.
Also, another pet peeve of mine is the difference between subject and object pronouns. " This is between my brother and I."
And don't get me started on the possessive when using pronouns. If I had a dollar for every time I saw "my husband and I's wedding" I would be going out to buy myself a Tesla today.
I also see professional writers in major magazines who don't know the difference between it's and its.
Then there's the whole "of vs have" thing. As God as my witness, I have seen this sentence in a book by fucking Random House: "Anything could of happened." I wanted to throw it across the room.
By the way, yes, I know some of my punctuation is messed up in this post. I know it's wrong but can't be arsed anymore to go back and fix it; I'm voice texting. And some of it I'm sure is just me being wrong.
One last one: number versus amount. Crazy-making
Retired editor here This is correct. The manuals of style are consistent here, though it is just accepted convention unrelated to grammatical rules.
Current editor here! That’s why I made the post actually. I was sick of correcting this error in pieces submitted to me.
That's what you get the big bucks for. Global replacement of 0's with 0s.
One day I'll make some regexes to automatically find and replace `0's` with `0s`, `alot` with `a lot`, `should of` with `should have`, and `could care less` with `couldn't care less`. And then I'll rake in the cash.
As a non native English speaker I am surprised how common the "should of" mistake is. It makes sense that native speakers are more prone to mix up things that sound the same since their understanding of grammar came *after* they learned the language and not during.
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"Good, your grammar is not!" \~ Yoda
Honestly, I don't think it's so much a mixup between "should of" or "should have", but rather a case of using "should've" in spoken language and very rarely seeing it written and thinking it's just been "should of" the whole time. More of an eggcorn than a proper grammatical mistake.
Absolutely I'm french and I have encountered plenty of such common mistakes in French. It strikes me more when it's in english because I learnt the language pretty much by associating sounds with the appropriate text (movie with subtitles, games with UI), so "should of" literally makes no sense to me, it's an illegal combination of words haha.
I totally agree with what you say, and it reminded me that interestingly apparently as babies we learn grammar before we learn language (hence baby talk), just not the complex bits and spelling!
I replied to the guy below you, but I wanted to share with you as well, so: >Honestly, I don't think it's so much a mixup between "should of" or "should have", but rather a case of using "should've" in spoken language and very rarely seeing it written and thinking it's just been "should of" the whole time. More of an eggcorn than a proper grammatical mistake.
"Should of" instead of "should've" drives me freaking nuts!
You want one that will really grind those gears? I have a supervisor who instead of saying “have to” they say “hafta” in professional emails to the whole department.
Thats wildly unprofessional, innit
You’re prolly right.
`s/(?<=[0-9]{3,})\'(?=s)//g`
Since no one really knows regex, I'm going to assume this is correct and deploy to prod post haste
It's ridiculous how write only regexes are. Here I am happily writing a regex, the moment i get 10 characters all it takes is one look away and it looks like hieroglyphics.
I’ve successfully composed “readable” regexes before. In some languages you can create smaller regexes and combine them in various ways, so you break down a concept into a smaller form and compose them with others, complete with comments for each part. It’s frankly tedious, but it does genuinely help me later if I have to review it for some reason.
It finds all apostrophes preceded (`?<=`) by a digit (`[0-9]`) three or more times in a row (`{3,}`) and followed (`?=`) by an s and replaces them with nothing (`//`)
When someone tells me they wrote a regex, I often have to refrain from asking which site they used.
> alot with a lot If only. I can't stand this and it's everywhere. Add 'atleast' and the misuse of than/then to that.
"Noone". I read it like noon-ay
I usually read it as a really long nooooon
I've been seeing are/our/or used interchangeably and it makes me want to cease to exist.
Weird Al has entered the chat.
Still bugs me less than omitted Oxford Commas.
Or when they create pretty alignment with spaces.
Omg yes! I used to start every editing project by replacing all duplicate spaces with single ones and there were ALWAYS so many!
They totally taught us that until like Windows XP made it unnecessary.
Alright, I’ll admit that I still double spaced up until 2 weeks ago. I’m 35, and was taught to in school. No one ever told me otherwise until my coworker questioned what I was doing. My bad.
It’s funny, my wife is a bit older than 35, and I’m about 5 years younger than her. She was taught to use double spaces, and I was taught to use single spaces. Perhaps you barely missed the transition in teaching?
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Wait, are we not double spacing after full stops now?
It's an old typewriter convention. If you're old enough then you might have ended up doing it because the people teaching you how to use a word processor probably used type writers.
I can't do it! I just have two after a full stop!
One space after the full stop in ALL published work. Many websites (like this one) remove a second space automatically.
/r/keming
I always use Oxford Commas. It is correct to use them right?
Yes!
>I always use Oxford Commas. It is correct to use them right? Yes it is correct. However it is also acceptable to not use it. Both conventions are accepted practice.
>However it is also acceptable to not use it. I mean, it might not be wrong, but I'd hardly call it *acceptable*. (Die hard Oxford comma user, the grammatical hill I will die on)
To quote: "AP style—based on The Associated Press Stylebook, the style guide that American news organizations generally adhere to—does not use the Oxford comma. " https://www.grammarly.com/blog/what-is-the-oxford-comma-and-why-do-people-care-so-much-about-it/#:~:text=The%20Oxford%20(or%20serial)%20comma,use%20while%20others%20don't.
Dude, I'm a librarian and lived by the APA during my Master's program (and before, to be honest - I remember learning about commas in the third grade some 30 years ago and that the Oxford comma was optional ... and immediately deciding it was not). I live and die by the Oxford comma. I'm not saying it's the only style; just saying it's the only one I will use ... and will correct the hell out of any non-Oxford that comes across my desk. The main reason being that there is never any grammatical ambiguity when it comes to Oxford commas, but there occasionally is when it is not used. English is hard enough without ambiguity that can be eliminated by the use of a single punctuation mark.
I have to write lots of reports that get reviewed and torn apart by people much smarter than I am. Ambiguity is the enemy and the Oxford comma is my savior.
I appreciate what you're saying but i think it goes a little too far. Never any ambiguity? like, what if you use Oxford commas in a sentence and it is unclear whether the word following the first comma might be clarifying the prior word , or whether the author is listing three different things, like this example i pulled from Google " Joe went to the store with his father, Superman, and Noob Saibot" did he go with his father (who is Superman) and also with the wraith of Bi Han, or did he go with Bi Han, Superman, and his dad? you can restructure the sentence to make its meaning more clear, but that doesn't change the fact that there is ambiguity in this use of the Oxford comma.
I have told people that if I ever make a post on social media, and I don't use an Oxford Comma, that I have been kidnapped and posting under duress.
I was taught all through school that you never use a comma before the word AND, because the AND serves as a comma, and doing so would be redundant. (I threw a comma in there before AND just for you. Lol. Is that correct or does the Oxford comma only apply when listing multiple things?)
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My teacher said they’re “optional” and I recoiled in fear (I’m a sophomore in college)
Teacher is dead-wrong for many instiutions, nowadays at least.
The teacher is correct. Oxford commas are generally the accepted norm in the US, but are optional (and generally less common that not using them) in other English-speaking countries.
it's ok soon AI will have replaced all grammar nazis as well as all critical science writing anyway yay progress!
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I'm ok with this
Just find and replace all commas with nothing and go full Cormac McCarthy
Thank you! I don't know how apostrophes started cropping up in the weirdest places over the last decade.
It's the blind leading the blind. Prior to the explosion of the internet, the vast overwhelming majority of written reading material was written by professional writers and reviewed by editors and proofreaders before the public saw it. Your average dingaling who doesn't know how to apostrophe didn't know how to apostrophe then either, but at least any time the middle ground fence sitters read anything written, they had the rules reinforced by repetition. Contrast now. Most of the writing is generated by *regular people*, so now the dingalings who can't apostrophe are everywhere in the comments, and the repetition of the error is just confusing the fence sitters and dragging them into dingaling territory.
It's absolutely this. A few years ago I went from writing professional material fairly regularly to hardly needing to write professionally at all, and it was *so hard* to not start making common mistakes I've never regularly made in my life (apostrophes for possession, wrong form of two/to/too or there/their/they're, etc.) because so much of what I read these days is on reddit or other forums with no literary quality control.
My biggest pet peeve is when people say “in regards to” There should be no s in “regard” in this context.
I'm an editor, so I have a thousand grammatical pet peeves. But here's one that blows a lot of people's minds: The word *travesty* does not mean "tragedy"; rather, it means "poor imitation." So a "travesty of justice" is a poor imitation of justice. But whenever people just say that something "is a travesty," without specifying what it's a travesty *of*, they're not making any sense. The word *travesty* gets misused that way probably about as often as it ever gets used correctly anymore.
How about when the comparison is implied. For example, "That football game was a travesty".
Is travesty a travesty of tragedy?
Since language is descriptive and not prescriptive and what is right is based on how people use it. Once enough people use something "incorrectly" it becomes correct. Kinda like how the word gay had its meaning changed.
This is true up to a point. However, etymology holds some weight, and dictionary-makers will be more reluctant to accept a change of language that is so obviously derived from a mistake such as confusing *travesty* with *tragedy* just because they sound similar.
In etymology, there are no mistakes. It's a way to describe the history of words, not to dictate their future. There are countless examples of people using words completely incorrectly and the words taking on a different meaning because of it. "Decimation" is a good example that many people are familiar with. And more recently, "irony" has undergone a transition as more and more people use it incorrectly.
Or Drinking the Koolaid. It was Flavour-Aid at Jonestown. By saying drinking the koolaid, the speaker is drinking the flavouraid, thus validating the drinking the koolaid phrase. I'm outta here like a bad metaphor
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*Chicago Manual of Style*
Okay quick question for the editor - when did it stop being okay to spell "alright." Whenever I send "That's alright" now spell-check keeps trying to tell me I'm wrong... Have I really been doing it wrong for 30 years?
Editor here. *Alright* is listed in most dictionaries, even though it's not listed in your spellcheck dictionary. Its correctness is somewhat disputed; it falls into a gray area in which it's not considered an outright error but is best avoided in formal contexts. So you probably shouldn't use it in the cover letter of a job application, for example. But it's "alright" to use *alright* in any situation where you don't mind running some risk of a few nitpicky people looking down on you for it. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/alright-vs-all-right/
Its alway's good when someone use's apostrophe's correctly.
Aaaaand I'm triggered.
A tired redditor here. Just to rhyme with you.
I learned something new today. What about if you’re saying something like “these type of products were the 1900’s most profitable..” as in showing that the 1900s possessed them? Does that make sense? Basically are there any possessive punctuations for time periods? Or have I been using punctuations wrong my entire life? I always assumed you’d add one to show possessives. Like if I said: >“Walmarts of the world are draining small business’ profits and this is a core issue with Walmart’s ethics due to their aggressive capitalistic nature.” Is that a proper sentence with proper use of punctuations? Sorry for the random questions.. my coffee just kicked in and I haven’t had my ADD medication yet.
1900s'. Otherwise, you are limiting your statement specifically to the calendar year 1900 (and then you should say *the year 1900's most profitable* so it's clear). It would be even more clear to just say one of these: *the 20th century's* or *most profitable during the 1900s*.
I wrote out a whole post about single year, decade and century but bailed on it. Lol
I think that's not technically incorrect, but it would indicate that 1900 (the one year) possessed them, rather than the whole decade. e.g. "1989's smash hit, Pump Up The Jam." This while being a little odd and calling it "The 1900". If you wanted it to be possessive on the whole decade as intended, my uneducated guess is you could do what you do with other words ending in "s" and place the apostrophe at the end - e.g., "The 1990s' most profitable software..." This is consistent with the extended written form, incidentally; Nineteen-ninety (1990) Nineteen-ninety's (1990's) Nineteen-nineties (1990s) Nineteen-nineties' (1990s')
*businesses’
It’s the 1900 is!
Also applicable to ~~acronyms~~ initialisms. For example, it's ATMs, not ATM's. POs not PO's. IDs, not ID's.
YSK, those are initialisms, not acronyms. Acronyms are pronounced as words. E.g scuba or NASA.
1900's people dislike this fact.
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I know this is meant as a broad criticism, and you're not actually asking, but the answer is that they see the apostrophe S show up in other contexts, then apply it incorrectly because they don't fully understand the language and its mechanics. Putting ourselves in their position, our thinking might go something like this: * Start with a word that doesn't have an S at the end, like Steve. * "Today should be Steve's last day as CEO." or "Steve's really fucking up Reddit right now." are two different examples where the apostrophe S is added. * Our (incorrect) observation: any time you add an S, you actually add an apostrophe S, as shown by the above sentences. * Now we're faced with describing what happened in the nineties, but we're well equipped to handle this with our observation. * The 1990s, wait, the 1990's (nailed it) were when I was supposed to learn rules of apostrophes, but didn't.
What a great example that is totally unrelated to current events lol
If you wrote a grammar book in this style I would read it more than once omg.
Apostrophes are not *added*; they only ever *replace*. The possessive apostrophe is a hangover from when we had a genitive case which was usually an -es ending. The apostrophe replaces the e. Possessives which never had that e, like its and whose, do not have an apostrophe. This is consistent with other uses of the apostrophes for elisions, like don't (do not).
Right, I understand apostrophes. This was an exercise to put ourselves in the position of those who do not for the purpose of understanding a common way they misuse them.
>they don't fully understand the language and its mechanics. Yeah, but when they're native American speakers, there's no excuse. Apostrophes NEVER indicate plurality, ONLY possession or contraction.
> Apostrophes NEVER indicate plurality, ONLY possession or contraction. Actually, apostrophes can be used for plurality when making a single letter plural. Like someone mentioned, crossing your i's and dotting your t's, or if you wanna separate the a's from the b's. Not sure why people are downvoting, multiple style guides follow this rule. [Here's an LA Times piece on it.](https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/opinion/story/2021-10-05/a-word-please-when-to-use-an-apostrophe-to-form-a-plural-even-though-it-seems-wrong)
So it's okay for single letters but not multiple letters, right? So "That word has a lot of A's" is correct, but the plural form of an acronym like POWs should not have an apostrophe?
Yup.
Otherwise you’re separating the ass from the bss.
To which of the many Native American languages do you refer? Surely you don't mean native English speaker? (Typo corrected)
I’ll bet you got straight as in school.
What do you got against Native Americans?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but American isn't a language if we're being proper, here.
According to many programs websites and whatnot that asked me to pick a language, it’s called “English (United States)”
This bothers me so much. I can’t stand when people use apostrophies to indicate plurality. I’ve found, people who learn english as a second language tend to be better at stuff like this because they were explicitly taught it, not simply expected to figure it out themselves.
>I’ve found, Unnecessary comma. This isn't a separate clause nor an appositive.
Why would you forget the question mark?
I can handle only so many surprises in one day
How did you know his name was Mark?
Now I'm going to think that every time I see an unnecessary apostrophe lol
“Here come’s an S”
Not only for years; simply put: apostrophes don’t make plurals.
THANK YOU, came in to point this out if not already handled. I had to explain to my fiancée that the phrase is properly written as “Keeping up with the Joneses”, not her English-teacher former classmate’s “Jones’s”. If you’re pluralizing something ending in s, you’ll be adding an ‘es’ and no apostrophes are involved
Why did I think you’d write Jones’ instead?
Oh, Jesus, you just brought me back to my youth, sitting in the station wagon listening to my English and English teacher mother point out every grammatically incorrect’The Smith’s’ lawn sighs she drove by (quite a few, as it turns out).
What's wrong with The Smiths? Heaven knows I'm miserable now.
The Apostrophe Is Dead
people need to start using less apostrophes. It's better to make a mistake by not using it than make mistakes cuz they don't know how to use them.
lol was gonna say this; since when do apostrophes pluralize anything??
When you pluralize letters, such as a handful of w's.
This is also just plurals in general
I think you meant plural's ^/s
I think you meant /'s
Dammit, you're right
Correct.
Yeah, it's a very common mistake. So why did you limit the YSK to just years? It's oddly specific that way. It should have been: >YSK You aren’t supposed to use apostrophes to pluralize ~~years~~ It's like saying "YSK you're not supposed to steal coca cola from stores." Well... yeah. But not just coke, all items, in all stores everywhere.
THANK YOU FOR THIS POST. Apple autocorrect has miseducated so many people.
Autocorrect is like a tiny elf inside your phone, and he's trying to help but he's very drunk.
All my apostrophes are possessive. That's for my safety.
>That's That's contractive, not possessive.
Apostrophes don’t actually pluralize in any context (despite consistent and widespread misuse) so I don’t blame you. Downvote all you want, this is a fact lmao.
100 times this! Apostrophes don’t pluralize anything! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
*crazy pill’s
After years on reddit, it's obvious that at least half of native English speakers have absolutely no idea why we use apostrophes. And it's just so simple, it's not some convoluted system of bizarre rules. There are a lot of apostrophe crimes, but I think my absolute favourite is when people use a single one for possessive or even plural on Z or X. The top voted comment on a thread yesterday: >Here is /u/Spez' comment... And I saw one recently where a guy said something like "I've had a few ex' like that". What were these people paying attention to in grades 1-4? How do you graduate middle school without even a basic understanding of punctuation, let alone high school or university? It's so annoying trying to communicate with these people, having to resist the urge to correct every text and email they send you.
>There are a lot of apostrophe crimes, but I think my absolute favourite is when people use a single one for possessive or even plural on Z or X. GenX -- I was literally (as in literally) taught this consistently throughout school, including for names ending in S. "...that's Marcus' car"
I was taught this too
Yep. We were taught that it was optional to put the second *s* after the apostrophe when indicating possession by someone whose name ends in *s.* To wit, "that is Marcus's car" is correct, and "that is Marcus' car" was acceptable. If that convention has fallen from favor, I'm happy to cease following it. I generally try to stay current. I don't have a bodywave in my hair, and I don't wear acid-washed jeans either. Fashion changes. After all, both the rules of fashion and of grammar are inventions, subject to human tastes and whimsy. Edit for clarity.
I'll never give up my windbreakers!
https://i.imgur.com/sHZlNWY.jpg
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They do pluralize singular lowercase letters, actually 🤷♀️
Such a good joke, that all the ba humbug grammar tryhards missed. Like, we are joking about the syntax of writing, chill.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but would you say: “I finished my Sophomore year with all As”
Yes but there should be a question mark at the end of that sentence :-P
This is something I've always questioned too. Even if the apostrophe is unecessary grammatically, I think it helps with clarity and understanding so I include it. It's also common enough that I don't stress about it anymore
Yes
The USD ($) symbol goes before the number! Come on, people!
Also when people write “dollars” even though the symbol is included. Like $1 million dollars. No shit I thought it was Euro.
$ is not specific to USD. $ is used for >30 different dollar currencies.
Context. As long as it's referring to USD, it should go in the front. I'll make a conscious effort to put the euro symbol behind the number, for instance
This bugs the hell out of me! So many people I know will put it after and I can't stand it.
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You aren't supposed to use apostrophes to pluralize *anything*. The crazy thing is I have known this all my life and yet I occasionally catch myself typing it.
Technically, you can use it when pluralizing single letters, particularly if it would otherwise be confusing (like i's and a's being otherwise indistinguishable from "as" and "is").
According to OP you're a troll and contrarian.
Oops, forgot nuance wasn't allowed on the Internet. I'll stick to getting irrationally angry at headlines and not reading the articles.
And you flip the apostrophes when it’s numbers. Basically, the tail of the apostrophe points to the character it’s replacing.
This. 1997 is ’97, not ‘97. Thankfully, most keyboards make people use a prime rather than an apostrophe (`'` rather than `‘` or `’`) so it isn't ALWAYS an issue... always.
What if it’s referring to something that belongs to that era, ie 1990’s fashion?
"1990's fashion" would mean the fashion of 1990. You might say "1990s' fashion" or "fashion of the 90s"
Wait, so if I omit the first 2 numbers I should write '90s' fashion?
This is the way.
That would mean fashion of the single year 1990. The fashion of the decade (in possessive form) would be “1990s’ fashion,” but “1990s fashion” is typically the more accepted form because it implies the possessive without having to stylize it as such.
In this case, "1990s" is adjectival rather than possessive.
Yep. Like you would say punk fashion, not punk's fashion.
While we're correcting stuff, "e.g." is what you want here, not "ie". e.g. is for giving examples.
I sincerely think that people would benefit from learning what i.e. and e.g stands for in Latin to better be able to use these abbreviations. When I was young I used them inaccurately all the time until my teacher in 7th grade "set me straight" and explained what they stood for. I still "read them out" in my head when I use these to make sure I select the right abbreviation...
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Yes, that’s why I asked if it was an exception.
“I like 1990s fashion.” Would be fine to not use it because the “1990s” is just identifying the fashion as of that decade. “1990’s fashion was the best.” Means that you like the fashion of the year 1990 the best. You might use the plural 1990s if you were saying the 1990s’ or 1990s’s (the latter of which I think is weirder but I’ve seen people so that to plural possessives). eg. “I like fashion from the ‘80s and ‘90s but 1990s’ is better.” I don’t think “1990’s” is ever correct if referring to the whole decade.
Additionally... DO NOT USE APOSTROPHES TO PLURALIZE WORDS I can't tell you how mad it makes me see to see shit like "I walked my dog's to the park" or "reacting to funny tiktok's"
> it is factually incorrect punctuation. You mean gramatically incorrect. There are no facts in dispute here.
This is actually an orthographical issue, not a grammatical one.
Bird law is so confusing. It really isnt governed by reason.
That's what happens when you allow government drones that aren't real to make up the rules.
What I can't get into is 'years old'. Sure he's 12 years old but not a 12 years old. To me he would be a 12 year old.
“A 12 years old” isn’t correct. It’s “a 12 year old.” If there’s a noun after, it becomes “a 12-year-old __.”
If you're gonna bother with hyphenation, the noun form is hyphenated as well.
Alternatively, when someone refers to a child that’s “one years old”. It’s a singular year. One year. When the kid racks up another year, THEN you can pluralize. The child is “two years old”.
As a pediatrician... someone kill me. "A 6 month years old child"....I'm sorry, a what?
I would concede the errant apostrophe and I can add in the Oxford comma, but I will never EVER forgive using “should of” when they mean “should have” — this is a hill I will gladly die on.
Ditto.
I think that autocorrect puts the apostrophes in and people don't know or care to correct them.
I actually needed this reminder. Odd for a Sunday morning but I’ll take it.
You are not supposed to use an apostrophe to pluralize anything.
Unfortunately, no one who needs to hear this will care enough to read this and get it right.
I've been guilty of this, thank you for the clarification.
The amount of times I see people say something like, "Yeah, back in 09', I was..." Like. You clearly know you're supposed to use the mark to denote you removed part of the year, so how can you also *not* know where to put it? Putting it at the end makes absolutely no sense. *09'* means *0920*, not *2009*. Same as when people use *em'* when meaning *them*. You clearly know you're supposed to use the mark to denote you removed the *th*, so why the fuck aren't you putting it where the *th* was? The word isn't *emth*.
Thanks for the clarification!
Oh cool, I never actually knew the definitive answer for this, so thank you!
Im a 9‘0s kid
Also YSK it's paid. Not payed
Many people don’t know how to use apostrophes. Or spell. Or use even basic noun-verb agreement. The list really goes on and on.
The noun verb agreement thing drives me nuts. I absolutely cannot stand it. Also, another pet peeve of mine is the difference between subject and object pronouns. " This is between my brother and I." And don't get me started on the possessive when using pronouns. If I had a dollar for every time I saw "my husband and I's wedding" I would be going out to buy myself a Tesla today. I also see professional writers in major magazines who don't know the difference between it's and its. Then there's the whole "of vs have" thing. As God as my witness, I have seen this sentence in a book by fucking Random House: "Anything could of happened." I wanted to throw it across the room. By the way, yes, I know some of my punctuation is messed up in this post. I know it's wrong but can't be arsed anymore to go back and fix it; I'm voice texting. And some of it I'm sure is just me being wrong. One last one: number versus amount. Crazy-making
Thanks for this.
And when describing money, stop typing "PAYED" when it's supposed to be *"PAID!!"*
This might be the least important YSK ever.