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Positioning of apostrophe

H

headpodd

New Member
Can someone help me with something please. Which of the following is correct:

Ten year's service
Ten years service
Ten years' service

Context: In recognition of his ten (years/year's/years') service with the company they gave him a gift

I am erring towards ten year's service but I have consistently seen it written all three ways.

Thanks
 
Speaking of apostrophes, can someone tell me which is correct:

Silas's cat clawed me.
Silas' cat clawed me.

I've seen it both ways, so I think both may be correct, but I'm not sure.
Also, off the topic of apostrophes, does the period go inside parentheses or outside?

She laughed at me (she always does).
She laughed at me (she always does.)

Sorry, I'm just too lazy to look it up, and my English teacher doesn't know anything about grammar :D (actually it's quite sad, so: :( ).
 
veggiedog said:
Speaking of apostrophes, can someone tell me which is correct:

Silas's cat clawed me.
Silas' cat clawed me.

I've seen it both ways, so I think both may be correct, but I'm not sure.
Also, off the topic of apostrophes, does the period go inside parentheses or outside?

She laughed at me (she always does).
She laughed at me (she always does.)

Sorry, I'm just too lazy to look it up, and my English teacher doesn't know anything about grammar :D (actually it's quite sad, so: :( ).
Click to expand...

I'm voting for (proper name) Silas's cat's claws (and all of the other (any old noun) cats' claws.)

and

... (she always does.) American style
... (she always does). British style

That's my understanding. And, don't apologize; this is all interesting stuff!
 
headpodd said:
Can someone help me with something please. Which of the following is correct:

Ten year's service
Ten years service
Ten years' service

Context: In recognition of his ten (years/year's/years') service with the company they gave him a gift

I am erring towards ten year's service but I have consistently seen it written all three ways.

Thanks
Click to expand...

In recognition of his ten years of service with the company they gave him a gift. I think you just change the wording in order to make your meaning clear. (But does that sentence need a comma?)
 
StillILearn said:
I'm voting for (proper name) Silas's cat's claws (and all of the other (any old noun) cats' claws.)

and

... (she always does.) American style
... (she always does). British style

That's my understanding. And, don't apologize; this is all interesting stuff!
Click to expand...

Thank you! I guess I've been using the British style all my life then. Maybe it's because I've lived in Canada most of my life?

Another question: when exactly do you use a semi-colon, and under what conditions?
 
StillILearn said:
I'm voting for (proper name) Silas's cat's claws (and all of the other (any old noun) cats' claws.)

and

... (she always does.) American style
... (she always does). British style

That's my understanding. And, don't apologize; this is all interesting stuff!
Click to expand...
I don't think that's correct, Still.

With the first one, I'm pretty positive that when a word ends in 's', you put the apostrophie after the 's' when the word is the possessor. It doesn't matter if the word is plural or not. Thus:

Silas' cat's claws.

But I would change the word order to ensure it was understood, eg:

The claws of Silas' cat.

Regarding the brackets, I have never seen a period inside the brackets. I certainly never saw that when I lived in Canada. It just doesn't make sense. A period is designed to end a statement, so why would the bracket come after the period?


One thing that gets me is periods/comma's, capital letters and quotation marks:

Susie laughed, "That's because you're a dog!"

"That's because you're a dog!" laughed Susie.

The last one can't be correct because the lowercase letter is following an exclamation mark... but I can't see how else it should be written. If there were no exclamation mark...

"That's because you're a dog," laughed Susie.

... it would look okay, I think.

Any advice?
 
Kook = Regarding the brackets, I have never seen a period inside the brackets. I certainly never saw that when I lived in Canada. It just doesn't make sense. A period is designed to end a statement, so why would the bracket come after the period?
Click to expand...

I was told that that the old-timey (American) typesetters always put the periods inside the parentheses because they were wont to to fall off otherwise as they were setting up the type. This didn't happen in Europe due to a different specific gravitational pull at those latitudinal regions.

Is it okay to pull penguins' legs?
 
Another question: when exactly do you use a semi-colon, and under what conditions?
Click to expand...

Answer: If you are Vladimir Nabokov you use semi-colons when -- oh, you tell us, Peder. :D

This may keep him moderately busy while the rest of us get back to our reading assignments.
 
How about these ones:

Sarah and Jim's conversation.
Sarah's and Jim's conversation.
(apostrophe on one name or both?)

Do you know where they even went?
Do you know where they even went?
(italicize the question mark or not?)
 
StillILearn said:
Answer: If you are Vladimir Nabokov you use semi-colons when -- oh, you tell us, Peder. :D

This may keep him moderately busy while the rest of us get back to our reading assignments.
Click to expand...

Somehow I doubt it. ;)
but we are all playing 'catch up'. :D

Or as the bookies say, don't make book on it. :D

Oh, and regarding the apostrophe in a word that ends in "s", I was taught to put the apostrophe after the "s" and not tack another 's' onto the word.
But my mother was English, so perhaps it is in fact an old-fashioned British rule?
 
Speak to us of semi-colons, pontalba? How and when did VN use them?

It would be a good thing if we could slow both of these guys down to about four hundred and twenty-five pages per minute.
 
StillILearn said:
Speak to us of semi-colons, pontalba? How and when did VN use them?

It would be a good thing if we could slow both of these guys down to about four hundred and twenty-five pages per minute.
Click to expand...
:D Fiddle de de! I can barely use commas, much less the exalted semi colon!
I will leave that to Monsieur Peder. ;)
 
veggiedog said:
How about these ones:

Sarah and Jim's conversation.
Sarah's and Jim's conversation.
(apostrophe on one name or both?)

Do you know where they even went?
Do you know where they even went?
(italicize the question mark or not?)
Click to expand...
1. The first one says that it's a conversation belonging to both Sarah and Jim (they are having a conversation with each other). The second one is actually incorrect as it implies there are two different conversations. Thus it should be "Sarah and Jim's conversations". A clearer example may be:

Sarah and Jim's children (meaning the children belong to both Sarah and Jim)
Sarah's and Jim's children (meaning that Sarah has some children and Jim has some different children)

2. The question mark should not be italisised. You are emphasising the word 'went'. Punctuation cannot be emphasised.


I should state that I have no specific source other than experience for these, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. If not, I'd love to know otherwise!!
 
One handy use for semi-colons is for people who write long sentences that list a number of individually longish items which, for example, might illustrate the stages of evolution of knowledge about punctuation, such as children discussing punctuation on their way to school; the same children walking home and discussing what they learned, after having discussed the matter with their respective teachers in class; parents talking things over among themselves and with their (own) children; and, finally, everyone -- children, parents, and teachers -- looking things up in the punctuation Appendices of their respective, and perhaps old, Webster's Collegiate Dictionaries, when they all finally get home at night. Single semi-colons are often seen between tightly related coordinate thoughts; full stops can often seem intrusive and choppy. All of which may not exactly be correct, or even remotely correct, or even phrased properly, but which can certainly be parsed out into separate free standing sentences with full stops between. Teachers frequently give such assignments for homework, or just for torture. Never mind Nabokov! What does he know? Better to ask Proust! So, all in all, sometimes semi-colons act like exalted commas; dashes like somewhat exalted parentheses (for ideas interjected in the middle of complete thoughts), but not for merely clarifying or expanding the meaning of words used in the sentence, as parenthetical comments do; and posessive apostrophes are always followed by "s"s nowadays even though the cat of Silas used to be taught to be acceptable as "Silas' cat." None of which may be correct, but all of which avoid those grammarians' horrors, the run-on sentence and the comma splice. Editors, grab your pencils! But, for much more amusing reading, one might try "Why I Live Down at the P.O." by Eudora Welty, which is where I may have learned the style. And that's only a beginning; more could be said (to paraphrase a mod). So don't get me started! :)
Now for breakfast,
And coffee,
Peder
 
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