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Notes from a Writer: When to use " s " and when to use " 's "


thatwordchick

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We normally cheat here and say “car headlights” … avoid the whole apostrophe thing altogether.

I call that “porky pigging,” if you’re familiar with the old looney tunes cartoons 😃 If I second-guess myself more than twice, I figure out another dang way to say it for peace of mind, haha!

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Can’t we have a protest movement to remove apostrophe’s’ altogether?

The hippopotamuses’ babies were all hungry. Sometimes to indicate a plural of something you add es on the end.

And what about commas? Where should they go?

I sort of have the feeling for where they should go sometimes, but don’t know the rules for them. Most of the time I just leave them out rather than get it wrong. Which is itself wrong.

Honestly, I know there are some people who understand grammar WAY better than me that can explain it, but I feel like it’s a poorly-kept secret among writers that we all “feel out” our commas. Commas are like printers: they can sense your fear and burst into split infinitives when you get anxious around them.

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I understand what you say, and I agree it can be seen that way, but I think this is just a happy accident where it has sense semantically.

I mean, you cannot do this with another example in this thread: “car headlights” where the noun doesn’t become a verb. (Also, the term “requests” is used as a noun extensively in the rest of the section)

It appears to me that these both cases have the same underlying rules (which I don’t know).

Whenever I think about this I somehow feel that words are becoming a compounded word or one of them become an adjective.

I love to see a bunch of seasoned writers talking about this, I’m learning a lot.

I understand what you say, and I agree it can be seen that way, but I think this is just a happy accident where it has sense semantically.

I mean, you cannot do this with another example in this thread: “car headlights” where the noun doesn’t become a verb. (Also, the term “requests” is used as a noun extensively in the rest of the section)

It appears to me that these both cases have the same underlying rules (which I don’t know).

Whenever I think about this I somehow feel that words are becoming a compounded word or one of them become an adjective.

I love to see a bunch of seasoned writers talking about this, I’m learning a lot.

That’s why I love Spanish, Alejo! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Our language is clearly ruled by RAE, giving it stability and guaranteeing the essential idiomatic unity. We don’t need to invent the wheel. 😉

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Can’t we have a protest movement to remove apostrophe’s’ altogether?

The hippopotamuses’ babies were all hungry. Sometimes to indicate a plural of something you add es on the end.

And what about commas? Where should they go?

I sort of have the feeling for where they should go sometimes, but don’t know the rules for them. Most of the time I just leave them out rather than get it wrong. Which is itself wrong.

And what about commas? Where should they go?

Commas are weird but for non academic work, anywhere you as an educated native English speaker feel a comma should go should be ok. The reason is that while there are rules about commas, there is also the caveat where a comma can be used simply to break up a long sentence.

So, if you are writing something and, as a reader you would take a slight pause, you can put a comma there. This helps people to focus on the individual parts of a long sentence while also ensuring they are seen to be related parts of the same sentence. Semi-colons can be used where there is a more definitive break in a sentence but where a period would be wrong; like here for example.

(Also worth noting that there are plenty of places in this comment where a comma could have been used but wasn’t or could have been removed but wasn’t. This is because I wrote it with particular focuses in the sentence which is the whole premise of grammar.)

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I understand what you say, and I agree it can be seen that way, but I think this is just a happy accident where it has sense semantically.

I mean, you cannot do this with another example in this thread: “car headlights” where the noun doesn’t become a verb. (Also, the term “requests” is used as a noun extensively in the rest of the section)

It appears to me that these both cases have the same underlying rules (which I don’t know).

Whenever I think about this I somehow feel that words are becoming a compounded word or one of them become an adjective.

I love to see a bunch of seasoned writers talking about this, I’m learning a lot.

That’s why I love Spanish, Alejo! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Our language is clearly ruled by RAE, giving it stability and guaranteeing the essential idiomatic unity. We don’t need to invent the wheel. 😉

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And what about commas? Where should they go?

Commas are weird but for non academic work, anywhere you as an educated native English speaker feel a comma should go should be ok. The reason is that while there are rules about commas, there is also the caveat where a comma can be used simply to break up a long sentence.

So, if you are writing something and, as a reader you would take a slight pause, you can put a comma there. This helps people to focus on the individual parts of a long sentence while also ensuring they are seen to be related parts of the same sentence. Semi-colons can be used where there is a more definitive break in a sentence but where a period would be wrong; like here for example.

(Also worth noting that there are plenty of places in this comment where a comma could have been used but wasn’t or could have been removed but wasn’t. This is because I wrote it with particular focuses in the sentence which is the whole premise of grammar.)

I think the takeaway is that skilled editors are both dark magicians and also doing the lord’s work. <3

But yes, Eoin, I’m with you. Unless someone goes all William Shatner on a sentence I think comma-by-feel is a valid modern method of writing, particularly in casual audience-aimed pieces.

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I think the takeaway is that skilled editors are both dark magicians and also doing the lord’s work. <3

But yes, Eoin, I’m with you. Unless someone goes all William Shatner on a sentence I think comma-by-feel is a valid modern method of writing, particularly in casual audience-aimed pieces.

Yes, exactly.

The aim with punctuation is to get people to read your writing in the same way as you have written it.

The panda eats shoots and leaves versus The panda eats, shoots, and leaves.

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And what about commas? Where should they go?

Commas are weird but for non academic work, anywhere you as an educated native English speaker feel a comma should go should be ok. The reason is that while there are rules about commas, there is also the caveat where a comma can be used simply to break up a long sentence.

So, if you are writing something and, as a reader you would take a slight pause, you can put a comma there. This helps people to focus on the individual parts of a long sentence while also ensuring they are seen to be related parts of the same sentence. Semi-colons can be used where there is a more definitive break in a sentence but where a period would be wrong; like here for example.

(Also worth noting that there are plenty of places in this comment where a comma could have been used but wasn’t or could have been removed but wasn’t. This is because I wrote it with particular focuses in the sentence which is the whole premise of grammar.)

Semi-colons can be used where there is a more definitive break in a sentence

I looove the semi-colon; I want to use them all the time.

That was probably the wrong time to use one but I really don’t care; they are just fun to use. 🧨

It’s not a period; not a comma; it’s a semi-colon!

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