punctuation

A correctly used apostrophe

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After I mentioned a hymn in my previous post, I remembered another hymn I sang last year where a correctly used apostrophe causes another issue. I have sung the hymn many times before, but not noticed that issue.

Most hymnbooks have the music and words separate, with the music at the top and/or on the left hand page and the words in verses at the bottom and/or right hand page. Some hymnbooks always and others sometimes, especially for hymns with an irregular number or stress of words, have the words between the two staves, with each syllable placed under a note, separated by a hyphen whenever necessary. This hymnbook has the first formatting by default, but this hymn has an irregular number or stress of words, so this hymn has the second formatting.

The hymn Holy Spirit, ever dwelling in the holiest realms of light has the words Holy Spirit, ever living as the Church’s very life and Holy Spirit, ever working through the Church’s ministry in the second and third verses. The ’s turns the one-syllable Church into the two-syllable Church’s (compare justice’s sake in my previous post). In the first formatting, there’s no problem. In the second formatting, the editors must decide to use either Church -’s or Chur – ch’s, both of which look strange and are problematic in different ways. The editors’ solution is to sidestep the choice by setting Church’s without a hyphen, spanning both notes. I can’t immediately decide which I would choose.

The same issue occurs in the hymn The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. The English hymnbook we use has the first formatting, but the US hymnbook I have a copy of at home has the second formatting, and uses Church’s unhyphenated spanning both notes. Both of these are major hymnbooks within the Anglican/Episcopalian Church. There are also free versions of both hymns on the internet, which use Church’s, Church – ’s and Chur – ch’s. Most people wouldn’t notice.

More catastrophic apostrophes

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Since posting about apostrophes twice recently, I encountered two more usages which are plain wrong.

The first was in a legal document, discussing social conditions in a country which I can’t remember but is irrelevant to the point (warning, brief mention of abortion):

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your welcome and it’s package

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While I was drafting my previous post, I pondered whether people are more likely to write or type its instead of it’s or or your instead of you’re or vice versa. 

Firstly, by themselves its is far more common than it’s (and some of those are obviously it has), and your is even more common that you’re (Google Ngram Viewer). Its has declined slightly since about 2005, and it’s has increased slightly since about 1980 and steadily since about 2000, though that might be more about increasing informality in writing (using it’s rather than it is and it has). Your has increased significantly since about 1980 and you’re also slightly since about 1980 and steadily since about 2005.

The Language Log commenter I quoted in my previous post complained about your welcome and it’s own package. You’re welcome is far more common, and has increased steadily since about 1980 and significantly since about 2000. Your welcome has increased slightly since about 2000. Note that your welcome is correct in a longer sentence like Thank you for your welcome. Ngrams has no results for it’s own package. its own is far far more common than it’s own, which increased from the early 1960s to early 2000s, then has been decreasing. Of the most common next words (accord, way, weight, sake, reward, right, nature, peculiar, proper, axis) only peculiar and proper are correct (if they are followed by a head noun). But even they are all far less common than the versions with its. I think the Language Log commenter is worrying too much about the wrong things. 

A general Google search for “your welcome” shows mainly discussions/explanations about why it’s incorrect, but also a podcast/Youtube with that title (I can’t tell whether that’s a mistake or a deliberate play) and an unauthorised video of the song You’re Welcome from the movie Moana. A search for “it’s package” shows mainly longer phrases like “It’s package sorting time” and the computer terms “it’s package module” and “it’s package variant”, but also an answer to a question on Reddit “Should I open it, or leave it, in it’s original package” – “I would say keep it closed and take care of it’s package”.

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It’s its or its it’s

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Late last year Language Log had a post about about a movie titled Rebel with a Clause, about a linguaphile named Ellen Jovin who sets up a “grammar table” in public places, at which passerbys ask questions, tell stories and voice their complaints about “grammar”. I use quotations marks because at least some of the questions aren’t about grammar (but are about language). The first pair in the trailer ask about “the proper way to use y’all … does the apostrophe go before or after the a?”. It goes before; it is a contraction of you all and the apostrophe replaces the ou. But this question is about punctuation, which of course intersects with grammar, especially in written language, but we could expunge our written language of all punctuation and still have grammar, and spoken language doesn’t have punctuation at all.

I was surprised that y’all v ya’ll is a question at all, but there are various discussions of it on the internet. Y’all isn’t used much in Australian English, and certainly not by the people I interact with.* Perhaps people are getting misled by ’ll as the contraction of will. Ya’ll = you will???? I don’t think anyone uses that. (Yall have a good time = You all have a good time or You will have a good time????) (*During my first stay in Korea a young American woman colleague came into the staff room, saw a box of donuts and said “Who all’s been to Dunkin’ Donuts?”. I asked whether that was standard ussage for her, and she said yes. Possible answer: “We all (w’all) have been to Dunkin’ Donuts”?)

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Plurals and possesives

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Since the candidacy of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, there has been some discussion of what the relevant plural and possessive forms of their surnames are (search and you will find). I would unhesitatingly add es and ’s to each: the Harrises (if necessary) and the Walzes, and Harris’s speech and Walz’s speech. There are unconvincing arguments that names ending with s should take only an apostrophe, or that ’s should be used if the extra s is pronounced but not if it’s not, but people speak in different ways. But plurals should not be made with ’s. Snopes has two reports of photos of distant cousins of Tim Walz wearing Walz’s for Trump t-shirts. It says “some [Twitter/X] users … questioned the apostrophe appearing on the T-shirts”. Another page refers to Harris’ family.

I few days ago in Melbourne I saw the Princess Theatre, which one sign gives as Princess’ Theatre and Wikipedia as originally the Princess’s Theatre (with no mention of which Princess (if any in particular)). Note that the princess didn’t ever ‘possess’ the theatre.

We have one prince and the prince’s theatre, multiple princes and the princes’ theatre (see also the Princes Highway), one princess and the princess’s theatre and multiple princesses and the princesses’ theatre. If we have to make a distinction, we might say princes’s and princesses’s respectively. Many years ago two of my sisters shared a rental house and I sometimes had to make a distinction between my sister’s house (another sister) and my *sisters’s house (those two).

Linguistic comments are welcome. Political comments aren’t.

Comma or no comma?

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You’ve probably figured out that I find Microsoft Word’s grammar checker rather too simplistic, but sometimes it throws up an issue which is subtle and interesting. A sentence was equivalent to:

After the first hearing the plaintiff wrote to me, because I had raised a concern that he had not mentioned physical violence in his written claim, and submitted that he had never been physically harmed by the defendant.

The grammar checker suggested removing the second comma. But that would change the meaning of the sentence. As it stands, the person who submitted was the plaintiff, because everything between the commas can be omitted:

The plaintiff wrote to me and submitted that he had never been physically harmed by the defendant.

Removing the comma means that the person who submitted was the legal officer:

The plaintiff wrote to me. Why? Because I had raised a concern [about one thing] and submitted [another thing].

At least that’s my reading on it, on the basis that plaintiffs, in general, submit. Legal officers, on the other hand, among other things, find:

I had raised a concern [about one thing] and found [another thing].

If the relevant verb was suggested, then the sentence could go either way; plaintiffs and legal officers can equally suggest.

This might all have been avoided by adding ‘to me’ (viz, the plaintiff submitted to ‘me’) or ‘to him’ (viz, ‘I’ submitted to the plaintiff). I didn’t have to decide, because my editing tasks don’t include inserting or removing commas. 

Added later: the more I thought about it, the more submitted seemed a strange choice either way. Legal officers don’t have to submit anything to a plaintiff, and a plaintiff will usually submit something supporting their case. Here, the plaintiff’s case was actually weakened by conceding that he had never been physically harmed.

Irritation

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Yesterday our editor suddenly exclaimed “Doesn’t anyone know how to use a semicolon?” (with regard to an article he was editing). Very soon after, he added “Or a colon?”.

I said “You’re obviously suffering from colonic irritation”.

Effective English

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… more important than so-called good English [is] effective English. English that clearly, strongly and unambiguously ‐ unless you’ve a penchant for ambiguity – conveys from writers’ brains through their typing fingers and onward to the imaginations of their readers what it is that writers are attempting to communicate.

Benjamin Dreyer is “is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House”. He has just released a book called Dreyer’s English AN UTTERLY CORRECT GUIDE TO CLARITY AND STYLE, which I am neither endorsing nor not endorsing. I am less likely to buy it after finding myself described as a “godless savage”, and Dreyer obviously didn’t proofread that job title himself. And I would question three things about style in the quotation itself. But I fully endorse effective English.

Today on the Sydney Morning Herald website is this article, from which the quotation comes.

(Checks post very carefully in case there’s any mistakes: Muphry’s Law.)