The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #39822   Message #566407
Posted By: Margo
06-Oct-01 - 06:32 PM
Thread Name: For pedants only
Subject: For pedants only
I subscribe to Michael Quinion's newsletter regarding his site "World Wide Words". I was particularly amused by this:

Out There: Apostrophe Protection Society ------------------------------------------------------------------- While we're on the subject of the IgNobel Awards, we must mention the retired British journalist John Richards, who earlier this year founded the Apostrophe Protection Society. His aim is "preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language". You may feel, as I do, that he has given himself a hard task. However, he will be heartened by the award of the IgNobel Literature prize on Thursday for his efforts to "protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive". You can learn more on his Web site at , where you may see pictures of some egregious British examples of the greengrocer's apostrophe.

He's got a lot more great and interesting stuff regarding etymology. I think his site is in the links page here at Mudcat, but here's the address anyway: http://www.quinion.com/words/index.htm

enjoy, Margo