"greengrocer's apostrophe" (was Re: Cam(pb)ell)

[Your Name]

In editing a manuscript recently, I confronted the accordion of the
greengrocer's apostrophe placed after double quotes, which seemed a bit much
to.me.

So I made a bold edit, and lopped out the apostrophe, changing

people who drop their "r"'s

to

people who drop their "r"s.


Good thing the r-dropping wasn't at the end of a direct quotation!  Those would
be scare quotes for sure!


Joe Pickett










Bob Haas <highbob at MINDSPRING.COM> on 08/04/2000 02:30:36 PM

Please respond to American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>

To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
cc:    (bcc: Joe Pickett/Trade/hmco)
Subject:  Re: "greengrocer's apostrophe" (was Re: Cam(pb)ell)



It's an important question.  The answer:

IT'S's

No problem.

bob

> From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 10:45:24 -0700
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "greengrocer's apostrophe" (was Re: Cam(pb)ell)
>
> possessive IT'S is entirely a different matter from the ordinary
> greengrocer's apostrophe examples.  this spelling is so heavily
> determined by very general principles of english spelling that even
> careful writers who would never in their lives commit a greengrocer's
> apostrophe still produce a certain number of possessive IT'Ses [yes, i
> only did that to annoy; but how *should* i spell it?].