"Only illiterates form plurals with 's" Topic

Did these people ever go to school?
Whoever taught them that you form the plural of nouns by adding an 's to the end of a word?
And they don't even care!
They laugh and embrace their ignorance!

Too bad King Stannis is dead. After he got the "less and fewer" dolts sorted out, he would go after the apostrophe abusers. How many times do you have to have an 's branded on your forehead before you clean up your act?

Don't forget the "your and you're" brigade.

There total morons, I agree.

So does Siri sometimes on my iPhone when I dictate. It drives me nuts.

Tom

There and their…

To and too ….

Cavalry and calvary …

… it goes on forever …

There and their…

And "they're".

Then there's the "should of", "could of" and "would of" lot…

Must be a slow day.

Lose and loose is my pet peeve.

And where and were. Jeez, are people getting dumber by the moment or what?

Agree with loose and lose.

Another one is the current fad of saying 'I could care less' rather than 'I couldn't care less'.

Wow!!! It's the little things that upset people? I wonder how many little mistakes we all make in our walk through life and never look back. We excuse ourselves for our mistakes or ignorance but condemn others for their little mistakes. Life's too short and has too many major problems to deal with, to get ourselves upset over spelling of words among other things that people do. We're all still human last time I checked, and all fall short of perfectness in some area of our life, except for the aliens planted among us. Oh yah, I remember Jesus saying, "He who is without sin cast the first stone." I was never a good speller in school either. I could sometimes be guilty of these mistakes too! I think it's the character of a person that counts the most. That's the way I see it and I'm sticking to it! Hahahahaha!

Thank you Doug. Winston has nothing better to contribute. Your thinly veiled personal attack is distasteful and petty.

Again? Seriously? More kvetching isn't going to alter the behavior.

Your

Shoe

Age

Not

Act

And

Size

Rearrange these words into a well known phrase or saying…

John T

Again? Seriously? More kvetching isn't going to alter the behavior.

Sadly not. What DO they teach them in schools these days?

Yawn.

Sometimes the auto-correct makes it a word other than what I intended … But my spelling is nothing to write home about !

Must be a slow day.

Yes, really … with all the other things to argue about ! LOL !

On another thread an "individual" didn't like my grammar … I responded, "I didn't know there was going to be a quiz ?!?

We excuse ourselves for our mistakes or ignorance but condemn others for their little mistakes.

Amen … Doug MSC +5 !
And it's on a site about Toy Soldiers !!?!?!?

Many of the examples given above result,as we all know, from software "corrections". They even make it into print. I recall an article in the old print version of Fanfare magazine--I was puzzled by some lines,such as "Ohio,I get it",and "…no reason to drag it across the peninsulouisiana". Turned out the writer had set his spellcheck to fill in state names when he typed the abreviations.
I try to go back and correct the "corrections",but I can understand that someone could get tired of this,and say heck with it,the meaning's clear.
Doug,how far was your tongue in your cheek with those two to's? Or is it "tos"?

Somebody is upset.

I usually let the horrendous sin of apostrophe abuse slide, but it has gotten out of hand lately.
We also had Iraqi's the other day.
Iraqi's …. Nazi's ….
It seems that any word ending in a vowel is particularly vulnerable.

(Sigh)
Yes,yes,and "Musketeer's",too(that's right,Russ,I'm looking at you)!

I find it fascinating that "some people" seem to think that proper grammar is only necessary when taking an English test.
It's like being proud of not having to use arithmetic anymore.

Just ask them to put in the missing letter(s) represented by the apostrophe and see what happens …

And what does all this teach our friends for whom English is not their first language?

The title of the OP is a truism.

By definition someone who misuses apostrophes is illiterate.

Personally I am a lot less clear about the difference between 'less' and 'fewer', let alone what is wrong with split infinitives.

But then again the only grammer I was ever actually taught at school was Latin, French and German. English seemed to be more the province of interpretive writing and reading Shakespeare in front of the rest of the class.

I imagine starting sentence's with 'But' is bad too.

Hafen, It wasn't a "tongue in cheek" it was a mistake! not by the spell check either. I told you I wasn't good at this spelling thing! Hahahaha. They actually gave me my H.S. diploma behind the stage instead of in front of everyone.
Barely made it thru H.S. except for the fact that it pays to know people in an Italian neighborhood in Chicago in those days!
OH yah, I'm not making fun of Winston nor any of the others, just giving another way of looking at things. Winston is a good man and is on my short list of getting freebees from Trident Designs Miniatures.

Wally Simon always made fun of people who couldn't figure out the difference between it's and its.

Folks from PA do not have much room to discuss grammar!!!

Not when your license plate says "You've got a friend in Pennsylvania".

"Have got" is redundant. If you have it – you got it. This was my grandmother's pet peeve and she nobody ever got away with "you've got" in her presence.

Please do not hold me responsible for the illiteracy in Harrisburg.

My current peeve is when a woman calls in on her husband for punching her then tries to stab you in the back when you arrest him. in the scheme of things i don't much care about punctuation…..

What about people who spell colour without a U? Just damn lazy, if you ask me.

Incomiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!

Their their, calm down….

Nicely slipped in the incorrect spelling of " grammar" there Martin.
Use fewer when it is clearly a number- fewer people are supporting John's position on the apostrophe than he might like OR John has less support than he anticipated. My wife says I should use less butter on my bread. You would correctly say " there is less money in my account than I thought I had", but " I have fewer fivers in my wallet now that I have been to the Wargames show".
Mind you, we did have a gentleman, who was Chancellor and PM of our great country, but did not know when it was appropriate to use "less" and "fewer", so you are in good (?) company.
Pedantry- the true sport of the time rich.

Not when your license plate says "You've got a friend in Pennsylvania".

"Have got" is redundant. If you have it – you got it.

"got" is the past tense of "get" as in having got something you didn't have before. An archaic form of "got" is "gotten" that I believe is still used in normal speech in some parts of the US.

Another way of saying it would be "You've gained a friend in Pennsylvania", and that make perfect sense.

For the "have got" combination see:
link

It's a quiet afternoon.

U should all b writing proper American like what I do

U should all b writing proper American like what I do

I was not aware that American is a language?

Why earns it thee so, Winston?

Ron

Rout and route, two very different things.

Tainted water makes your bowels loose.
When playing games I often lose.

Yes I'm an old coot. Spelling seems to be a thing of the past.
Get off my lawn.

I have noticed that old folks have a secret code. Just write in cursive. The young usually can't read it.

Putting quotes around something to give it emphasis is endemic.

I consider such use of quotes to indicate doubt about the veracity of the name.

Imagine two bins marked as follows:
mushrooms, $3.50 USD lb.
'mushrooms" $.39 USD lb.

Let's not forget that honest to Gawd typos do occur, Gentlemen, and the OLDER among us find it increasing common to think "right" and type "left," so cutting some slack by patience is always in order.

HOWEVER, this is a forum where many of us truly are remarkably well read and knowledgeable on subjects both widely or only very narrowly known among actual historians. Indeed, where some of us lord it over the rest of the monkeys with their haughty command of bolt patterns in German tank designs produced in the Summer of '42 as opposed to the Autumn of '43, or the lace and button variations on French Legere uniforms between the 1805 and 1809 campaigns--and very smugly, I might add.

And yet we collectively show our feet of clay when we don't know the difference--and frequently let be known we simply don't CARE to know--between "their," "they're," and "there." Or we add apostrophes whenever we think there ought to be one in the mix ,somewhere--rather like adding pepper to the stew.

Why should I--or anyone else--take your glittering brilliance seriously when you write like an illiterate? Or, by extension, show up at a Convention, and smell like an ape?

Come along now, we're here to have fun and share, but can't we do so as educated adults?

TVAG (Prepared for a firestorm of wounded replies from people I don't even know who are SURE I mean them personally!)

P.S. Winston For President (of something or other….)

That's politics, Patrick. Watch it.

Though it doesn't pertain to grammar per se, a number of famous authors have been notorious for their bad spelling. The only one I can think of off hand is Doctor Johnson (it is true, spelling was rather up for grabs in those days--no one had got (gotten?) around to creating the OED yet--but it seems he was considered eccentric even for his time). Didn't hold him back much, all things considered. There are other examples, but my afternoon isn't quiet enough to look them up.

By the way, I'm not suggesting everybody spell words however they choose--spelling and grammar are important--but it does go to show…

"You are the product of 4 billion years of evolution…..act like it"

"Chatroom/texting Shorthand" is my pet peeve. There is just something about it that drives me almost homicidal. I suppose it's just the sheer unnecessary laziness of it.

I tend to get quite cross when it pops up in my Facebook feed or when I get texts featuring such nonsense.

"I hope you made good use of all the time you saved there in not typing out 'you', 'for', and 'ok'!" is how I usually react to seeing such a purposeful typing sin! ;-)

Imagine two bins marked as follows:
mushrooms, $3.50 USD USD lb.
'mushrooms" $0.39 USD USD lb.

Is it customary to mix single and double quotes?

The things I don't care about are prattling porpoises and titles on TMP threads that can't be changed when scoffing braggarts and technocrats of grammar point them out.

As much as I try to write correctly I often find myself doing it properly.

no one had got (gotten?) around to creating the OED yet

Perhaps "no one had yet created the OED". Concise, clear, fewer words and less typing. ;-)

I'm not suggesting everybody spell words however they choose--spelling and grammar are important

"… everybody should spell however …". Sorry. Couldn't resist.

--
Martin Stephenson
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