Klarinet Archive - Posting 000002.txt from 2000/12

From: Gavin Rebetzke <GRebetzke@-----.au>
Subj: RE: [kl] War of the Tony`s
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 00:53:06 -0500

I believe Mr Vahala is correct. The apostrophe is used to indicate
possession, or as an instrument of abbreviation. For example, "I've heard
that Tony's clarinet playing is great". Apostrophes have no part in forming
plurals. That is not to suggest that the plural of the name Tony is
Tonies. The problem is that "Tony" is a proper noun. I'd suggest it is one
Tony, two Tonys. I cannot account for what my computer calls "US English",
however.
Gavin

-----Original Message-----
From: Karel Vahala [mailto:vahalakv@-----.au]
Subject: Re: [kl] War of the Tony`s

I am almost positive that you are wrong, Neil. "Tony's" means belonging to
Tony,
and never correctly "two Tonies". As in pony and ponies.

Karel.

Neil Leupold wrote:

> --- Karel Vahala <vahalakv@-----.au> wrote:
>
> > And I thought Australia was the only place that uses < ' > wrongly.
Sorry to
> > jump on this, but as English is my second language, there are mistakes I
find
> > very irritating. The use of the apostrophe, which means < of >, to try
and
> > express < plural > is so common. And since language is our means of
> > communication, teachers everywhere should work to eradicate this awful
> > malexpression. It is almost as bad as calling a rest the continuation of
the
> > preceding note.
>
> I'm a bit of a closet English-o-phile, and it is actually proper usage
> in this case to include the apostrophe to denote plurality. It looks
> wrong, yes, but nobody ever accused the English language of being con-
> sistent.
>
> -- Neil
>
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products.
> http://shopping.yahoo.com/
>
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