ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

I was perhaps overly brief... I wasn't suggesting "the houses of each other" as a readable construction, just an easy way of indicating where the apos should go.

As for singular house... it's idiomatic either way so perhaps it's just personal preference. Trying it with some other objects - "they drank each other's milkshake" vs "they drank each other's milkshakes" - ah they both seem fine to me!

I see what you mean about more than one house each though.

Help!

Our house style is to italicise any foreign words and define them in brackets afterwords. Our standard gloss for salafi is "a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam", but in a sentence like this:

Previous militant attacks in Morocco have been blamed on Sunni salafi groups.

I can't just stick a big noun phrase in brackets after an adjective. Any ideas?

(I think fundamentalist might be better than puritanical as well, but I suppose it has connotations that we don't always want to convey.)

Are Salafis not an ethnic group in this context, and thus also capitalised?

Previous militant attacks in Morocco have been blamed on Salafi groups, who follow a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam.

?

No, it's just an Arabic word, not a specific group (Sunni or Shia) or a movement following an individual (Wahabbism). It literally means "predecessors" or "early generations", and refers to behaving as the companions of the Prophet and the first three generations after him did, and avoiding innovations, so fundamentalism would be better.

BUT, your version works fine anyway. Thanks. Sometimes get so close to something you can't see the obvious.

While we're at it, what's the adjective of Maghreb?

Maghrebi? Maghrebian?

Maghreb or Maghrib
noun

NW Africa, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and sometimes Libya. [from Arabic, literally: the West].

Derived words: Maghrebi or Maghribi adjective, noun.

Which is correct?

The company fully intend to retain its employees through its generous benefit plan.
The company fully intends to retain its employees through its generous benefit plan.

Is that a trick question?

The company fully intend to retain its their employees through its their generous benefit plan.
The company fully intends to retain its employees through its generous benefit plan.

Nouns like this can take plural or singular verbs, but you'd have to be consistent with the possessives. In this context we're talking about the company as an entity rather than all the people who are in it, so the singular is better.

In US English, you're much more likely to use the singular, aren't you? Certainly bands and sports teams take plural verbs in British English, but seem to take singular ones in US English.

Yeah, I would never use "company intend" in US English.

What's the opposite of "pointless"? "Pointful" isn't a word, "pointed" just seems wrong...

Pointy.

"pointed"?

A company is a thing. Using it as a plural is just wrong.

Collective nouns, such as committee, government, team, can be followed by either a singular or a plural verb form. When the singular verb form and/or singular pronouns are used, the group is treated as a unit; when the plural verb form and/or plural pronouns are used, the noun treats a group as a number of individuals:
The government has said it will take action.(treated as a unit)
The government have said they will take action.(treated as composed of different individuals/departments)
The team is in good spirits. (treated as a unit)
The team are in good spirits. (treated as composed of individual team members)
Plural concord is more common than singular in informal contexts. Further examples of collective nouns which behave similarly are:
audience,company, group, board, congregation, jury, committee, crew, public, community, enemy, staff.

That's from the Cambrdige Grammar of English. I think some of it is bogus, though. When would you use staff with a singular verb? Plus, as I said, this is another UK/US difference.

Cambrdige?

And there's a missing space before company. Grr.

The word highfalutin: one word, no hyphen, no apostrophe, no double-O in the middle of the second part. Not high-falutin', not hi-falootin', not hi-flauting. It's in the dictionary. Look it up sometime. Do you hear me, internet?!??!

My editor wants me to use Paris' as the possessive, as in "Paris' population rose 10% last year." It looks so wrong to me - I was taught to write it as you'd say it - Paris's - but she's very insistent. Who's right?

AP style says that proper names ending in "s" get just a single apostrophe for the possessive form with no additional "s"

But other style guides differ; for instance, my third-grade teacher taught us that if we were talking about afros we might say "Diana Ross's hair"

Hmm - the AP style guide vs Tracer Hand's third-grade teacher. I think I know who she'll regard as an authority. Shame, it seems to be so clunky to me - really breaks the flow as you read it.

It's not just AP's style guide. Our paper always does s poss s for singlular words ending in s, reserving s' for plurals.

Whoops - I mean "it's not just Tracer's third-grade teacher"

Actually I think -- suspect, really -- that the AP style guide is a bit of an outlier on this issue which is probably why you feel it looks wrong

xpost

Also, The Guardian style guide:

The possessive in words and names ending in S normally takes an apostrophe followed by a second S (Jones's, James's), but be guided by pronunciation and use the plural apostrophe where it helps: Mephistopheles', Waters', Hedges' rather than Mephistopheles's, Waters's, Hedges's.

Plural nouns that do not end in S take an apostrophe and S in the possessive: children's games, old folk's home, people's republic etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_archive_(punctuation)

tl;dr

AP style says that proper names ending in "s" get just a single apostrophe for the possessive form with no additional "s"

AP style is FUCKING WRONG, then.

alba: grrr. if you look back at the version-two style guide for your newspaper -- written, i believe, by some dashingly handsome and wildly intelligent young buck -- you'll find it says NOTHING OF THE FUCKING SORT. that's an RW-ism if ever i saw one.

mind, dude is the editor, so i guess it's his call :)

I thought Fowler was more or less completely against it, but I only have the Burchfield edition of Fowler's to hand, which says that dropping the s after s' is only for classical names (Socrates', Demosthenes'; also Jesus' is "acceptable liturgical archaism") and names ending in unaccented syllable pronounced -iz, e.g. Bridges', Moses'.

Most of my school English teachers suggested or at least allowed it in more circumstances than that, but then some of them also said some distinctly nutty things, so never mind.

gf, I think you misread me.

(RW still pushes the AP line that he learned from his English teacher, but so far your rule persists. There's another aspect to it, where we treat companies as singular, even when their name is plural, leading to such absurdities as "Northern Foods's profits", and band names as plural, leading to "Oasis'". I'm not sure where you stand on this. I think it's possibly a PMism, or maybe a RSism)

It seems a bit odd to have a rule based on the meaning of the name. "Paris's air of romance recalls Paris' elopement with Helen."

i believe the AP rule, like a lot AP rules, is primarily in the interest of saving space. all those characters add up. although on the bookshelf to my right i can see this:

http://www.bookcourt.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/jesus%20son.jpg

I've read some weird variant rule where singular names take a second s ... unless they're classical.

St James' Park (Newcastle)
St James Park (Exeter)
St James's Park (London)

This week Private Eye has decided to call the part of its letters section that deals with tooth-grindingly boring corrections "Pe'dants Corner"

gf, I think you misread me

hang on ... <re-reads> ...

Our paper always does s poss s for singlular words ending in s, reserving s' for plurals

... yes, you're right. somehow i read this (quickly) as "always does poss s" and didn't really think about how the last bit rendered that nonsensical. in which case: hurrah! yay me. even though i seem to have now lost the ability to read.

that said:

leading to such absurdities as "Northern Foods's profits", and band names as plural, leading to "Oasis'". I'm not sure where you stand on this

both of those are fucking insane.

Would it be churlish to point out that AP style, combined with the American tradition of always using the singular for proper names of companies and bands, would avoid both of the above embarrassments?

We use singular apostrophes for words that end with 's'. However, during their last session, the Arkansas State Legislature mandated that when mentioning the state, one should use "Arkansas's". Part of the thinking was the fact that the sound of the last syllable doesn't actually have an 's' sound.

Would it be churlish to point out that AP style, combined with the American tradition of always using the singular for proper names of companies and bands, would avoid both of the above embarrassments?

Yes, but we can just avoid them anyway. Also, the US way with singular bands means you end up having to work around things like "Oasis is great, but when it toured last year everyone laughed at Liam's new teeth".

Arkansas's". Part of the thinking was the fact that the sound of the last syllable doesn't actually have an 's' sound.

yeah but you add it when you say arkansas' -- "arkansaws". as opposed to "arkansaw-zes," which is what the apostrophe s would tend to lead to.

what alba said

The word highfalutin

this is important information! b/c i have only ever heard it said, not written! sort like 'lollygaggin'

oh hey i did you know that sublimation is not only when a solid turns into a gas but is what would be happening to all the accumulated snow right now if it weren't actually snowing right now. it is actually spelled sublimation's'in tho

Alba: Capladi? ouch

Yeah, I know. It wasn't me!

Please never ever get your hands on a copy of the first edition of last week's main section.

ooo.
Stan!

Beginning of shift: phone call from elderly doctor (retd) to tell me "data" is plural and so is "bacteria" and could we please have "datum" and "bacterium" in our pages when required, and by the way don't proofreaders spot such errors? We're practically a laughing stock in certain circles.

End of shift: find sweet letter from 7-year-old girl pointing out plural of "Ood" is "Ood".

what did you say to him? put him through to me if he calls back; i'd relish that fight

(tho i agree about bacterium, natch. data: when i've got my other hat on, i'd agree with that too. so it wouldn't be much of a fight.)