GRAMMAR FIENDS

This is for a letter of intention for grad school, by the way. I'm trying to connect a story about my student's interest in my car while I was teaching in China to a broader point about future geopolitical conflict between China and the US.

Silent S
If a word ends in an unpronounced s, make it plural by ignoring it—don’t add an s, an apostrophe, or anything else.

xpost indeed

into Google, you'll come up with several hits confirming my position, and none confirming yours

OH NOES THE MIGHT OF THE INTERNET IS AGAINST ME. I MUST VOTE FOR DAVID CAMERON/SAY "SHOULD OF" INSTEAD OF "SHOULD HAVE"/SPEND ALL DAY LOOKING AT BRITNEY'S VAGINA.

we need a new version of godwin's law: "when someone says 'ah, but google says this', the entire internet should be deleted." or similar.

hey! i've just remembered. i have mod powers in the sandbox. don't make me lock this thread, people. just don't.

http://sparky.thehold.net/pix/061205pertuises.jpg

(note mädchen, in the yellow dress, looking disapproving)

"My students seemed to be much more captivated by the object that my family and I were standing by: my car."

That sentence is awkward as hell and I'd never write it. There are many better ways to say that. "Nothing seemed to captivate my students as much as the car we were standing in front of" or "The car we were standing in front of was more captivating to my students" or the first version you posted, or probably best of all, an entirely different construction. But that one above, no way.

But come on, that sounds like choice D on some standardized test, the one that they throw in there just to give you something that's easy to eliminate and that you can't imagine anyone would ever really pick.

Hey, Steve, how would you rewrite this sentence: "I'm a fanny"?

Now, according to Fiendish, this sentence could apply equally to three girls called Françoise, or three boys called François. But anyone looking at it would automatically assume the former, not the latter. To avoid confusion, if you mean boys called François the sentence would have to be: "There are three François in my class."

Hence Fiendish's solution fatally fails the comprehension test, and clarity is surely at the heart of all editing decisions. Which means that Fiendish is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

no it wouldn't. when did i say that? stop putting words in my mouth.

clarity, eh? how's this: "GIVE IT A REST, YOU TEDIOUS FUCKING PRICK."

Your solution to names that end in a silent 's' is to add "es" for plural. So for you, the plural of François is Françoises. And the plural of Françoise is Françoises.

clarity, eh? how's this: "GIVE IT A REST, YOU TEDIOUS FUCKING PRICK."

Christ. It's a thread entitled "grammar fiends". No need for gratuitous abuse.

no it isn't. my solution to "pertuis" is to add -es. it's a surname, where the pronunciation will not be obvious to many people. if you bother to read the thread, you'll see i've made this point at least twice. you might disagree. i appreciate that.

and, as i keep saying: it's a non-lexical item, therefore who's really to say how it should behave "gramatically"? not you, and not i. we've made our points - some more elegantly than others. as i've said so many times i'm bored shitless: the only people who really could give us a definitive answer are members of the pertuis family (and i bet there's division there too, heh).

No need for gratuitous abuse.

granted, that was a bit OTT and i apologise. but really, seriously: give it a fucking rest. eyeball kicks has made his decision, and it's based on his own intelligent reasoning. i disagree, but i respect his professional decision. for you to still be wittering on like a schoolboy some 18 hours after he said: "please, stop it now" is really, really fucking irritating.

and that's my final word on the matter.

Grimly, FWIW, I would agree with you if it wasn't a silent s. But it is.

xpost