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You're reading an old entry from Michelle "Lexi Kahn" DiPoala's online diary, formerly called Jungle Sweet Jungle. Blog name changed to Low Budget Superhero in October 2005. Now I mostly go by SuperLowBudge. You can call me Lexi, Michelle or SuperLowBudge, or if you're my mom, then Shelly. Enjoy these old posts (except if you're my mom.) Please follow on Blogger at superlowbudge.blogspot.com. From there you can follow me on Twitter and some other platforms. Thanks!



The Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostrophe

(October 11, 2002)

It's opening night. It's opening night. It's opening night. It's opening night.

________

Some industrious soul just found the Jungle when he/she used Google to look up "english contraction's." P'raps I'm just too dull-wittedly bone tired, but right now I think this is tragically, hilariously funny.

For those of you not yet laughing, shaking your head, or at least rolling your eyes, no fear, I'll over-explain with charts and graphs and *footnotes, and in so doing, suck the very life out of the funny.

See, the plural of contraction is contractions. No apostrophe. The apostrophe makes it a possessive. The Google-searcher is using the wrong form. To wit:

    There are twelve cats on my head.
    Please don't drink the cat's milk.
So, the funny is, this Google-searcher, bless their wayward little soul, KNOWS they don't know how to do it, and is looking to the Internet for help in proper usage of the apostrophe, and, in the very search itself, demonstrate that yes, they in fact DO need help. See, it's like, circular logic regarding the very thing itself. Ipso facto. Or not. I don't know, it's just funny to me, that's all.

But now I feel bad, because what they FOUND was the entry where I rail against the bloody awful lack of attention to crap like this in the English-speaking world. (If ESL, you catch a break, but only a small one. This isn't verb-form stuff or crazy vowel-sound stuff-- the apostrophe rule is hard and fast.)

________

It's opening night.

________

*There is a prize for the first Guestbook Signer identifying the source of this Jungle Sweet Jungle entry title.

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