[Corpora-List] Encoding of apostrophes and quotes

[Nicholas Sanders]

With the 'correct' Danish genitive form being s without the  
apostrophe, it is amusing to note that the 'correct' English form is  
creeping in - as in the case of a shop in, Rønne on the island of  
Bornholm, named Simon's!


On 4 Jul 2006, at 03:34, Peter Tan wrote:

> We know that the possessive apostrophe is a relatively recent  
> development and was not used by Shakespeare, for example. If the  
> possessive apostrophe started out in the mistaken etymologising  
> belief that there was some form of elision, perhaps there might be  
> a case for getting rid of it (the way it is happening in a lot of  
> informal written text - eg St Johns Wood - and maybe even formal  
> text - eg Harrods, Woolworths), and we might be able to stop  
> telling people not to use the apostrophe in the possessive pronoun  
> its!



-- 

Nicholas J A Sanders
_____________________
semiotek

T: +44 [0]7092 153 409
nick at semiotek.org
_____________________


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