Wat happened to the English language?
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Richard MacCutchan wrote:
It's "
it's" not "its".FTFY! :-D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
John R. Shaw wrote:
what we writwrote makes sense.
John R. Shaw wrote:
Have fun taringtearing apart the above
Pots and Kettles... To answer your rant, most publishers no longer employ editors or proofreaders. They rely on the spelling correction and grammar in word processors, which -as long as English is not replaced by LOGLAN - will never be perfect.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote:
It's "
it's" not "its".FTFY! :-D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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John R. Shaw wrote:
what we writwrote makes sense.
John R. Shaw wrote:
Have fun taringtearing apart the above
Pots and Kettles... To answer your rant, most publishers no longer employ editors or proofreaders. They rely on the spelling correction and grammar in word processors, which -as long as English is not replaced by LOGLAN - will never be perfect.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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This is part of world digitalization. The target nowadays is to get the information transmitted quickly, disregarding the formatting. If I tell you that your smart, you got the message, even though I used your instead of your're. Grammar is eventually only important to those who consider it important, and fact is that it is not important to transmit content. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy reading a text free of mistakes, but it is because I am an old fart whom it was taught that writing correctly was as important as the content of the message itself. This is not true anymore : in no times there will be nobody anymore shocked by texts full of mistakes - the checkers will be as ignorant as the writers.
Rage wrote:
writing correctly was as important as the content of the message itself. This is not true anymore
"Let's eat grandma" or "Let's eat, grandma" Punctuation saves lives!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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:-O
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Stuff that's written online tends to be written online. So it relies on online spell checkers, but rarely grammar checks. I cringe every time I see "lead" instead of "led", "principal" instead of "principle", and worst of all "could of" instead of "could have" etc. But part of the reason, at least in the UK, is down to what is being taught in schools and universities. Once they abandoned the formal teaching of rules and replaced it with free thinking then spelling and grammar were no longer known. So you had a generation (or more than one) that never learned these things but still became employed as writers and editors. Microsoft word has a lot to answer for. As do all similar applications.
I'm not even English and I cringe every time I see "there", "their" and "they're" being used wrongly.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
Hate to brag*, but I'm a published author. Before I handed in a chapter to my editor I double checked if everything was correct. My editor barely made any corrections, and when he did make a suggestion it was often something weird like "maybe you can explain what 'x' is or maybe not, your call." At one point I got another editor and he read the already edited chapters as well, still no corrections. When my book was published and I got the physical copy I was proud. I opened my book on a random page and the first thing I noticed was a #@$&#!@^&^&! TYPO! :mad: :laugh: This was written and double checked by me, two editors, a technical editor and finally someone who does a final check on spelling and grammar. What I think is happening here is that everyone thinks the next person is going to fix it, but that person thinks the same. That sort of behavior happens everywhere. For example, the piles under my house were too short and my house started to sink into the ground (during construction, luckily). The piling(?) company, the construction company, local authorities, some overarching builders group, and I think three more parties looked at a plan to fix it and came to an agreement. The plan failed and in hindsight it never could've worked. Seven(!) parties did no do their job and an entire row of houses had to be demolished in order to get good piles into the ground (they went from 6 m to 21 m, so go figure). If that happens to a row of houses it could sure as hell happen to some book or article that may or may not be read. OK, I love it, but I'm obliged to say that if I don't want to sound like a douche ;p
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
John R. Shaw wrote:
Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes
Nice challenge. :)
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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I'm not even English and I cringe every time I see "there", "their" and "they're" being used wrongly.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Exactly so, and the problem is just compounded by the fact that non-English speaking children, like you, get taught the rules. I used to support our European teams, both remotely and via customer visits in my last job. I was always impressed with the standards of spoken and written English. And when someone was not sure how to use the correct word or phrase, they would always ask first.
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Hate to brag*, but I'm a published author. Before I handed in a chapter to my editor I double checked if everything was correct. My editor barely made any corrections, and when he did make a suggestion it was often something weird like "maybe you can explain what 'x' is or maybe not, your call." At one point I got another editor and he read the already edited chapters as well, still no corrections. When my book was published and I got the physical copy I was proud. I opened my book on a random page and the first thing I noticed was a #@$&#!@^&^&! TYPO! :mad: :laugh: This was written and double checked by me, two editors, a technical editor and finally someone who does a final check on spelling and grammar. What I think is happening here is that everyone thinks the next person is going to fix it, but that person thinks the same. That sort of behavior happens everywhere. For example, the piles under my house were too short and my house started to sink into the ground (during construction, luckily). The piling(?) company, the construction company, local authorities, some overarching builders group, and I think three more parties looked at a plan to fix it and came to an agreement. The plan failed and in hindsight it never could've worked. Seven(!) parties did no do their job and an entire row of houses had to be demolished in order to get good piles into the ground (they went from 6 m to 21 m, so go figure). If that happens to a row of houses it could sure as hell happen to some book or article that may or may not be read. OK, I love it, but I'm obliged to say that if I don't want to sound like a douche ;p
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
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Hate to brag*, but I'm a published author. Before I handed in a chapter to my editor I double checked if everything was correct. My editor barely made any corrections, and when he did make a suggestion it was often something weird like "maybe you can explain what 'x' is or maybe not, your call." At one point I got another editor and he read the already edited chapters as well, still no corrections. When my book was published and I got the physical copy I was proud. I opened my book on a random page and the first thing I noticed was a #@$&#!@^&^&! TYPO! :mad: :laugh: This was written and double checked by me, two editors, a technical editor and finally someone who does a final check on spelling and grammar. What I think is happening here is that everyone thinks the next person is going to fix it, but that person thinks the same. That sort of behavior happens everywhere. For example, the piles under my house were too short and my house started to sink into the ground (during construction, luckily). The piling(?) company, the construction company, local authorities, some overarching builders group, and I think three more parties looked at a plan to fix it and came to an agreement. The plan failed and in hindsight it never could've worked. Seven(!) parties did no do their job and an entire row of houses had to be demolished in order to get good piles into the ground (they went from 6 m to 21 m, so go figure). If that happens to a row of houses it could sure as hell happen to some book or article that may or may not be read. OK, I love it, but I'm obliged to say that if I don't want to sound like a douche ;p
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Sander Rossel wrote:
but I'm obliged to say that if I don't want to sound like a douche
That's not how it works. :-\
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
-
I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
I agree with you completely. I've been a grammar and spelling nerd since birth pretty much. (My English teacher used to have me stand at front of class and would say "Tell them about apostrophes" or something, and disappear for a fag for 20 minutes). Partly, yes of course it's technology. TXT speak, predictive text and all the rest encourages laziness and re-inforces incorrect usage. Partly, of course, languages evolve and I have no real problem with the introduction of new words and the partial loss of others. What winds me up, though, is the use of words that are simply wrong and either give an incorrect message or an ambiguous one. I cannot understand how people routinely make statements that make no sense whatsoever - nor can I understand how people manage to correctly interpret it a lot of the time! One thing I've noticed is that people, now in their 60s, who used to speak correctly are now adopting the ridiculous use of "of" when they mean "have": "I could of broken lockdown". It makes no sense, it doesn't save any time, and I can't see how or why it arose. Maybe people have either damaged their hearing so much, or are just so lazy when listening to others, that they've mis-heard "could've" as "could of" and assumed that "of" has another meaning. When this started, I assumed it was just a pronunciation issue, but of course it rapidly spread into writing as well. Now we're bombarded online and on TV with ads for "Grammarly" - based on the supposition that grammar and spelling are "hard" and take so much effort that you need software to do it for you. However if people just applied some thought to the language they used, plus maybe learned a few simple rules, it should come pretty naturally. Misuse of language particularly irks me when used by the media (especially the BBC) - these are professional communicators, and part of their role (in my opinion) is not only to communicate effectively and accurately, but to act as a role model in communication. (I also get annoyed by full-time professional drivers, e.g. cabbies and lorry drivers, who make the most basic and annoying errors - such as middle-lane hogging and failing to indicate). Perhaps the root cause is the speed with which society moves these days; when replying to a letter, a response wasn't expected for a couple of days (remember when the postman called several times a day?) but with text and WhatsApp there is an expectation of instant reply to everything. We arguably write more than we ever have done, but have less time to do it
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
John R. Shaw wrote:
These where obviously people who grew up with the language
:rolleyes:
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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This is part of world digitalization. The target nowadays is to get the information transmitted quickly, disregarding the formatting. If I tell you that your smart, you got the message, even though I used your instead of your're. Grammar is eventually only important to those who consider it important, and fact is that it is not important to transmit content. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy reading a text free of mistakes, but it is because I am an old fart whom it was taught that writing correctly was as important as the content of the message itself. This is not true anymore : in no times there will be nobody anymore shocked by texts full of mistakes - the checkers will be as ignorant as the writers.
john where james had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval
Punctuate that - or better still, make sense of it without the punctuation. Punctuation IS content, it tells you so much, and alters - sometimes dramatically - the meaning. Why don't people understand that?? (Thanks Daniel for that example; not seen that one before but shows how a comma can save a life!)
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This is part of world digitalization. The target nowadays is to get the information transmitted quickly, disregarding the formatting. If I tell you that your smart, you got the message, even though I used your instead of your're. Grammar is eventually only important to those who consider it important, and fact is that it is not important to transmit content. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy reading a text free of mistakes, but it is because I am an old fart whom it was taught that writing correctly was as important as the content of the message itself. This is not true anymore : in no times there will be nobody anymore shocked by texts full of mistakes - the checkers will be as ignorant as the writers.
The irony being, of course, that our digitized world is driven by software that is 100 times more pernickety about punctuation than the worst/best of us! (Including white space in some cases...) I wonder how some of today's "yoof" react when put before VisualStudio and expected to understand that it actually matters whether you use a capital letter or not, or that a comma and a semi-colon are not in fact interchangeable.
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I have read books written over a hundred years ago that had no grammar or spelling errors. That is just good editing. I sometimes take a long time in responding to emails or online questiona in an attempt to avoid errors (unfortunately they still occur). The issue I am addressing now has to do with language, syntax/grammar. At first I thought the description of movies/shows (no matter how old) was because someone with English as a second language was writing it (part of the time). Then I started to see a trend, it was not just the people writing movies description, but people writing books and news articles. The most important one being news articles. These where obviously people who grew up with the language and simply do not understand it or are unwilling to put in the effort to do it correctly. With books (and news) I understand; you just start writing and let if flow, but the misspellings and grammar issues should be corrected before publishing. But it is reaching a ridiculous extent; are their employers just ignorant or just don't care (more likely they are just as ignorant or think we are). Sorry, that is my little rant. I just read a news article that was missing words (which required me to fill in the blanks) and also appeared to be incorrect (where's the editor?). And those responsible for verifying the validity of their statements. Technically; I do not speak English, I speak American, but expect people writing in that language to actually understand it or at least have someone editing (verifying) that what we writ makes sense. That's enough, I got carried away (2:59 AM), when I read something, I expect to understand without having to insert missing word, etc.. Have fun taring apart the above, as I had no editor and made now effort to correct mistakes, but I am also not publishing a (so called) professional article.
INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
John R. Shaw wrote:
Wat
The same thing which happened to the title of your post.
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Sander Rossel wrote:
it never could've worked.
Most native English (and American) speakers would've written "could of", and do not even understand why it's (i.e. 'it is') wrong.
They're, their, there, it's so simple :^) One thing I sometimes struggle with is "it's" instead of "its". For example: Sander's/Sanders book is awesome That's because in Dutch it's "Sander's" while in English it's "Sanders". However, when you say: Chris' website is awesome, you do use that apostrophe and it's the same as in Dutch. Sanders presidential campaign (that would be my presidential campaign) vs. Sanders' presidential campaign (Bernie's campaign). Or in Dutch, Sander's presidential campaign and Sanders' presidential campaign. It's not just an English phenomenon though. Dutch language skills are deteriorating as well. Especially the dreaded "dt" rule (singular second person is singular first person + T). "Ik vind" (I find) and "Hij vindt" (He finds). You see stuff like "Ik vindt" (horribly wrong) and "Hij vind" (less wrong, but still wrong). I must admit I sometimes do it wrong too and I still struggle with the past particle of some words (does it end with a D or a T?) :laugh: Hard to explain to a non-Dutch I guess ;) Let's just say I find such grammar errors in business emails, even the more formal ones.
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
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They're, their, there, it's so simple :^) One thing I sometimes struggle with is "it's" instead of "its". For example: Sander's/Sanders book is awesome That's because in Dutch it's "Sander's" while in English it's "Sanders". However, when you say: Chris' website is awesome, you do use that apostrophe and it's the same as in Dutch. Sanders presidential campaign (that would be my presidential campaign) vs. Sanders' presidential campaign (Bernie's campaign). Or in Dutch, Sander's presidential campaign and Sanders' presidential campaign. It's not just an English phenomenon though. Dutch language skills are deteriorating as well. Especially the dreaded "dt" rule (singular second person is singular first person + T). "Ik vind" (I find) and "Hij vindt" (He finds). You see stuff like "Ik vindt" (horribly wrong) and "Hij vind" (less wrong, but still wrong). I must admit I sometimes do it wrong too and I still struggle with the past particle of some words (does it end with a D or a T?) :laugh: Hard to explain to a non-Dutch I guess ;) Let's just say I find such grammar errors in business emails, even the more formal ones.
Best, Sander sanderrossel.com Migrating Applications to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly
Sander Rossel wrote:
That's because in Dutch it's "Sander's" while in English it's "Sanders".
No, the correct English usage is, "Sander's book"; which is a contraction of "Sander his book". The apostrophe tells us that some characters have been removed. When the word normally ends in an 's' (as in Bernie Sanders or Chris) then we just put the apostrophe and do not add the extra 's'; although, strictly speaking, we should.
Sander Rossel wrote:
Hard to explain to a non-Dutch I guess
But not to those of us who are fascinated with language and its (belonging to it, as his is belonging to him) usage.
