The same inversion occurs with its and it's, the contraction of "it is" to it's effectively removing the apostrophe from the possessive form " its" of course the plural form is of no account in this pronoun.
It would not suprise me that given enough time and the persitence of a plethora of acronyms that the whole thing might invert itself, so that the apostropy is reserved for plurals and "s" alone would signify the posessive. I hope that the love of the acronym may decrease before this happens if only to preserve the reading integrity of past literature.
But thanks for posing this problem which forced me to review my own errors and sift through the logic behind them. The above proposition is obviously speculative and probably not true so please take it with a grain of salt.
Greg
--- Message Received --- From: joanna bujes <joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:35:48 -0700 Subject: English question...
This is soooo embarrasing...
Starting in the mid eighties, I started to notice that a large percentage of my students confused the genitive with the plural ending: "Her parent's went to church. The grandmothers pies were the best." etc.
I could not figure out how exactly the collective American mind had short-circuited into this stuff, but the evidence was there before me every time I graded a paper.
Now, I'm doing it. So, all you current/former English teachers and editors: is it EVER correct to specify a plural ending with an 's???
I see this in technical writing ALL the time: "To broadcast a message, specify a list of url's for the destinations."
????
Joanna
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Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all
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