Grammar and language issues that drive you utterly berserk - Pet peeves

[ThisHill2DieOn]

It's Harris' and Walz's. If you have a problem understanding that, especially as a professional writer, literally kill yourself.

There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. Grammar nerds are fired up debating the rules for possessive proper names ending in S.

By HOLLY RAMER
Updated 2:02 AM UTC, August 14, 2024

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes. But it doesn’t take much to get grammar nerds fired up.
“The lower the stakes, the bigger the fight,” said Ron Woloshun, a creative director and digital marketer in California who jumped into the fray on social media less than an hour after Harris selected Walz last week to offer his take on possessive proper nouns.
The Associated Press Stylebook says “use only an apostrophe” for singular proper names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. But not everyone agrees.
Debate about possessive proper names ending in S started soon after President Joe Biden cleared the way for Harris to run last month. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s? But the selection of Walz with his sounds-like-an-s surname really ramped it up, said Benjamin Dreyer, the retired copy chief at Random House and author of “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style”.

AP correspondent Norman Hall reports there’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?
Dreyer was inundated with questions within minutes of the announcement, which came while he was at the dentist.

“I was like, ‘All right, everybody just has to chill. I’ll be home in a little while and I can get to my desk,’” he said.
While there is widespread agreement that Walz’s is correct, confusion persists about Harris’ vs. Harris’s. Dreyer’s verdict? Add the ’s.
“To set the ’s is just simpler, and then you can take your valuable brain cells and apply them to more important things,” he said.
Woloshun chimed in with a similar opinion on the social platform X, where apostrophes are being thrown around like hand grenades. “The rule is simple: If you say the S, spell the S,” he argued.
That puts them on the same side as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal — and at odds with AP.
While AP style has evolved on many fronts over the years, there are no immediate plans to change the guidance on possessives, said Amanda Barrett, AP’s vice president for news standards and inclusion.
“This is a longstanding policy for the AP. It has served us well, and we’ve not seen any real need to change,” she said. “We do know that the conversation is out there and people make different choices when it comes to grammar, and that’s all fine. Everyone makes a choice that works best for them.”

Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that until the 17th or 18th century, the possessive of proper names ending in S — such as Jesus or Moses — often was simply the name itself with no apostrophe or additional S. Eventually, the apostrophe was added (Jesus’ or Moses’) to denote possession, though the pronunciation remained the same.
“That became kind of the standard that I was taught and adhere to, even though in retrospect, I don’t think it’s a great standard,” he said.
That’s because linguists view writing as a representation of speech, and speech has changed since then. Pulju said he expects the ’s form to become dominant eventually. But for now, he — along with the Merriam-Webster dictionary — says either way is acceptable.
“As long as people are communicating successfully, we say language is doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said. “If you can read it whichever way it’s written, then it seems like it’s working for people. They’re not getting confused about whose running mate Tim Walz is.”

If she wins in November, Harris would become the fourth U.S. president with a last name ending in S and the first since Rutherford B. Hayes, who was elected in 1876 — 130 years before the founding of Twitter — and was spared the social media frenzy over apostrophes. Harris is the first nominee with such a tricky last name since 1988, when Democrat Michael Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush.
Dukakis, now 90, said in a phone interview Monday that he doesn’t recall any similar discussion when he was the nominee. But he agrees with the AP.
“It sounds to me like it would be s, apostrophe, and that’s it,” he said.
The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear position. A press release issued Monday by her New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office wrote about “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”
___
This story has been updated to correct that Harris would be the fourth president with a last name ending in S, not third and that Dukakis lost in 1988, not 1984.

https://archive.is/eLkP5

 

[Character from a movie]

It's Harris' and Walz's

I thought it was Harris's and Walz's, since both are proper nouns. Common nouns that end in S in their plural form only have the apostrophe.

 

[Heliantheae]

people who insert French phrases into conversation

C'est la vie, mon ami.

 

[rebel]

"I didn't do nothing" instead of "I didn't do anything"

i aint do nuffin

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

people spelling rogue "rouge"

people spelling definitely "defiantly"

lol, being a strongman fan I constantly see people type rouge instead of 'Rogue,' to the point where I thought there must be some kind of in-joke. Nope - people are just retarded.

Re- the French thing. As a proficient speaker myself, I'm in the 'depends' camp. I think if the person using the phrase has a good understanding of it, its original context, AND can actually pronounce it well, then it's perfectly acceptable. It's a shame that 99% of the time this isn't the case.

 

[Pagan Min]

Okay, okayokayokayokay... here's one more...

Using lead when you mean led... *le sigh*

 

[CowPox]

Anyone have any recommendations for games to get better at grammar with alla typing of the dead or some such etc?

 

[DoomsdayElite]

"I could care less."
You fucking retard.

 

[Wot Zit Too Yah0996]

C'est la vie, mon ami.

Be quiet, Gambit.

@DoomsdayElite That one drives my dad up the wall. He's like, "Oh, well, let me tell you more then!" He's always had pet peeves about grammar issues, such as, "The proof is in the pudding", and his current job and arguably lifelong ambition, is teaching English as a foreign language.

@rebel I GOT... NUFFIN LEFT!

 

[Dysnomia]

"I could care less."
You fucking retard.

You could use it sarcastically. But people suck at detecting sarcasm now so it likely wouldn't work.

I hate it when, people write, like, this. That's not how commas work. Learn to commas.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

It's Harris' and Walz's. If you have a problem understanding that, especially as a professional writer, literally kill yourself.

If putting 's at the end would result in -s's, then drop the final s. It works for plural nouns, too. Why is this hard?

 

[Flatline]

Anyone have any recommendations for games to get better at grammar with alla typing of the dead or some such etc?

No games. Read well-written books, articles, and journals. Have a question about a certain grammar rule? Consult a reference: The Elements of Style or Dreyer's English.

 

[The Feline Solution]

It's Harris' and Walz's. If you have a problem understanding that, especially as a professional writer, literally kill yourself.

As an ESL fag this helps me, i always felt unsure if s' is the correct way to write it. Not unsure enough to look it up myself apparently.

AND can actually pronounce it well

I get irrationally mad at people who use foreign words and pronounce them wrong. We got a ton of loan words from different languages that we pronounce wrong/badly in the german language (for example, we call sweatshirts pullovers but we pronounce it like one word, not like pull-overs. Kinda hard to make clear what i mean in writing) and i am okay with that but when you are a YT video essay faggot and pronounce oeuvre as "oover" because you are a filthy, monolingual yank it brings my piss to a boil. Same for jap media content narrated by english speaking nerds, "hurr, i am sorry i am probably butchering this word". Fuck you, nigger, it takes a second to look up and listen to how shit gets pronounced properly on forvo.Please be patient, i got language autism

I hate it when, people write, like, this. That's not how commas work. Learn to commas.

Guilty What's even worse is that i struggle with commata more in my native language than in english.

 

[Flatline]

I hate it when, people write, like, this. That's not how commas work. Learn to commas.

You'd be surprised how easily it is to trigger a low-skilled writer by responding, "Nice comma splice."

 

[a hapless toad]

People who don't know the difference between palate, palette, and pallet.

This bears repeating because I see it on here all the time.

This is a pallet:

These are all types of palette:

And palate refers to the roof of the mouth or appreciation of taste/flavor.

 

[The Last Stand]

I don't have anywhere else to express this, but calling temporary suspensions "bans" might be the zoomers' greatest crime. Internet lexicology has always acknowledged a clear difference between a suspension and a ban and they somehow managed to wipe that distinction away. It's sickening.

I think ban for a prolonged period of time, usually permanent. A suspension is a temporary lapse on services.

 

[Cougar Pump]

I've noticed people now say something 'needs done' instead of 'needs to be done'. How upsetting. Needs fixed.

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

"Gift" as a verb. There's already a verb form of gift, give!

I gifted him a gift. A durrrrrrrrrr

 

[The Feline Solution]

I see more and more people using "phenomena" in place of its correct, singular form "phenomenon". Get it right, NIGGERS.

Some people don't know how to use the modifer/adjective "more" as in "more smart." They'll say "more smarter," when the "more" already signifies their intelligence. The -er for smarter makes the "more" redundant.

My elementary school english teacher (who was, for all other intents and purposes, not qualified to teach. She didn't pronounce stuff like the ch in ache correctly, i had to unlearn so many pronunciations because of her) beat that "more" shit in our heads so hard that i think someone writing "funner" instead of "more fun" must be actually mentally retarded to make an error like that when i read it.

Edit: English teacher pronounced the ch in ache like the ch in chink.

And palate refers to the roof of the mouth or appreciation of taste/flavor.

palate/palette confusion gets my goat every single time.

People who use "to" when they're meaning to use "too".

It's a typo i often make, i don't always catch it when editing posts for grammar and spelling.

 

[Positron]

In the "Tranny posting their Ls" thread, people are losing their cool over "make do" vs "make due"