ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

if the names ends in an 's,' but you can say it when apostrophized normally, go with the extra 's'.

Along those lines, I've heard that if the sound of the word ends with an S sound, don't put on an extra S. But if the word ends with an S, but doesn't sound like S (Arkansas, Des Moines, debris) all can have an 's.

Which is ridiculous. Our style where I work is no word with S on the end gets an 's.

ok i may have been misremembering. fowler's MEU says we wrote things like moses' "formerly" (i.e. before 1913) but it is now (ca. 1913) only retained in verse, which is why i probably associated it with "classical" names.

jesus and moses are basically an unknown first names in the uk. i do enjoy emailing my collaborator in tenerife, and beginning with "dear jesus".

iirc chicago style gives the same rule, or at least makes it permissible.

last night I saw the Seinfeld where Elaine trips over the possessive of "Onassis"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKlub5vB9z8

Should I use a conjunction or a disjunction when comparing a city to Sodom and Gomorrah?

While:

I’ve never been, but from my near-Puritanical Bostonian perspective, it’s Sodom and Gomorrah.

sounds correct. Sodom and Gomorrah were two separate cities. Therefore, isn’t:

I’ve never been, but from my near-Puritanical Bostonian perspective, it’s Sodom or Gomorrah.

correct?

Second one is correct, but you could get away with the first one. Sodom and Gomorrah are practically just like Winston-Salem or Raleigh-Durham.

I would go with the first one, for the reason pplains states - they are always quoted together.

Awesome. Thank you. :)

This is more of a grammar nerd, but is there a term for those clauses you always see in newspaper writing preceded by commas or en-dashes and starting with "who" or "which" -- "Johnson, who founded CreatiVest with two college friends in his Seattle Loft Apartment"? And also, if it omits the "who" or "which" is it still the same thing? "Skaarsgen, a massage therapist and artisinal donut maker" etc.?

iirc the first kind of clause is a relative clause, while the latter is an appositive

appositive is only if it's a nonrestrictive clause
if it's a restrictive clause that still omits the rel pronoun, i think it's called a dropped pronoun relative clause? something like that. they perform the same function, but one has a ghost function word/subordinator.

"[film] is a spin-off of [other film]" or "[film] is a spin-off from [other film]"?

first one seems correct but horribly clumsy

yeah I know ideally formulate it "[other film] spin-off [film]" but that won't work in this sentence

Of. Something can be "spun off from" but it can only be a spin-off OF.

Never had this mental image of an All In the Family carousel spinning out of control with Maude and the Jeffersons flying off out of its orbit.

agree with in orbit

film in "off of" foofaraw

i went with "spin-off of" in the end yeah

if one were speaking of, say, A.J. Pierzynski and A.J. Burnett, would one call them a pair of A.J.s or a pair of A.J.'s?

i support the former, but it looks weird with the periods

"a pair of men sharing the initials A.J."

"a pair of A's J."

In serious I'd probably just do some variant on what Aimless said, as there's no real gain in meaning or literary flair in referring to them as "A pair of A.J.'s" imo.

yeah, that's actually what i did -- i was just curious about the official ruling

plus that way I get to avoid the problem, and I have an avoidant personality

The former is fine. You'd only use the latter if there was some ajs word that would confuse the reader.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/30/10-grammar-rules-you-can-forget

fucking apostate

Much of what may be safely ignored depends upon the context in which it shall be applied. Calling many of these strictures "rules" is an overstatement, because the authority on which they are based is nothing more than highly inflated opinion. Breaking them does not cause any ambiguity or loss of information. Such rules only matter who insist on them, due to their innate inflexibility. A few of the rules mentioned do introduce minor problems in some cases, such as the one regarding the double negative, but they are hardly fit excuses for shaming and finger pointing.

the subjunctive is great and should not die

^^ agreed. it has a purpose and adds information and clarity when used properly.

already dead outside america

nah, I like a subjunctive

enfeebled

whom, subjunctive and other american pedantries

just thought I would share this headline that suffers from awkward phrasing/lack of punctuation:

"15 Celebrities Most People Don't Know Are Black"

#1: Darth Vader

oh, i definitely know that celebrity.

If you only knew...

I really initially read it as meaning "Here are 15 black celebrities most people have never heard of (because society is racist)"

Exactly 15 celebrities are black, but most people have never heard of them.

or "The 15 least-known celebrities are all black"

Or, everyone has a list of 15 celebrities they don't know - every person's list might be different – and in each case, all those celebrities are black.

"Coming in at #12 on my list: Alphonso Ribeiro. Who the fuck is that? I have no idea."

How would you style John Cage's 4'33" if you usually put the titles of short works (like songs) in quotation marks? Wiki seems to italicize it.

I think the rule would say to use '4'33"'.

You mean switch from double quotes to single quotes?

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300136999

italicized throughout

since there are three movements in it you are justified in italicizing it as you would other works with three movements, as opposed to songs, it seems to me

Nothing like editing a story for space/clarity and somehow adding 100 words.

Improved clarity accounts for the extra words. Now remove the extraneous words and bob's your uncle. Of course, the story will lose some of its effect if you pare it down to bare bones.