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Post by Verbivore on Oct 22, 2021 20:57:41 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 22, 2021 23:00:38 GMT
I find it very difficult to take these nouns of assembly with any seriousness. Even those originating in the Book of St Albans, validated by time as they may be, strike me as being originally just tongue in cheek inventions created to pass the time between compline and bed. I cannot believe that anyone needed most of these words. I think there is a real need, perhaps I’m exaggerating, for someone to do some proper research to discover their origins and whether they have ever been used seriously.
I seem to recall a Sunday newspaper offering a prize for the most amusing, newly invented nouns of assembly for all kinds of entities such as politicians, journalists, hairdressers and bloggers. Perhaps someone would like to invent a word for a group of inventors of nouns of assembly? A frivolity?
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 25, 2021 1:07:36 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 25, 2021 2:07:14 GMT
And it goes on to compound the error in the body of the text … twice!
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 25, 2021 5:38:12 GMT
And it goes on to compound the error in the body of the text … twice! So it does. I hadn't read the content as I thought it was about Sport and that's a topic that leaves me cold (zero kelvins). I merely caught the headline as I was browsing for items to read. Unlike BBC News online, which sensibly puts Sport items last, the ABC integrates Sport news with the rest.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 25, 2021 11:22:42 GMT
I don’t really understand the above posts. According to Wikipedia, “The Brooklyn Nets are an American professional basketball team…”. Leaving aside the question of whether the choice of a plural or singular verb should be applied to a team or a group of any kind, I would have thought that whether an S should follow the apostrophe is a matter of personal choice. I certainly prefer it without the following S but I am sure John Richards would have approved the usage in the article. Have I missed something? It is very early in the afternoon here and I have only just climbed out of bed so I am still a bit sleepy‼️
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 25, 2021 11:41:43 GMT
LJH: It makes no sense to me either.
I remain stubbornly ignorant of anything to do with sport. Even when I was proofing / subediting a newspaper's sports page (thank the gods there was only one each week!) I had no understanding of the stories or the terminology. Provided it made grammatical sense I let it pass, but I did my damnedest to avoid absorbing the information or developing an understanding of sports.
My knowledge of sports can be summarised thus:
Football: there are two kinds: a round one and an elliptical one. Cricket: an easy spelling of benzodiazepine. Tennis: a game of tantrums.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 25, 2021 11:52:17 GMT
I am not sure whether a post I inserted a few minutes ago appeared before I edited it or not. Unfortunately I tried to insert a quotation from Wikipedia and included a great deal of extraneous information. The item was then accidentally sent. I apologise if anybody received all the rubbish. I eventually managed to edit the rubbish out and it has certainly disappeared now but I think Vv might have seen the unedited version. Sorry about that.
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 25, 2021 12:10:05 GMT
LJH - I take it that you are saying that the Brooklyn Nets, as “a” team, could have the singular format of apostrophe-ess.
I’m most uncomfortable with that. The Beatles were “a” pop group and The Flintstones were “a” fictional family, but I’d write The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein and The Flintstones’ pet, Dino.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 25, 2021 16:26:13 GMT
LJH: It was indeed your pre-edited post that confused me. However, I'm further confused at your suggestion that an apostrophe-ess on Nets (i.e. Nets's) is appropriate or acceptable.
Taking Dave's references to The Beatles and The Flintstones, would you write (or accept) their 'possessive' forms as The Beatles's and The Flintstones's? Surely not.
Perhaps I'm a tad less than fully awake, too. It's 03:25 DST in eastern Oz; unusually, I couldn't sleep.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Oct 26, 2021 10:07:31 GMT
Vv. As I said, I certainly prefer it without the apostrophe S but, since the Brooklyn Nets is a team (singular), I think it is legitimate by some conventions. I have nothing to say about the Beatles or the Flintstones; partly it depends on whether you think a team is a group of individuals or a single entity. More importantly, I think the decision should be based on the sound of the spoken phrase, in which case I would prefer it without the apostrophe S.
We have talked about this before and chattered about all kinds of nouns ending in the letter S, particularly personal names, and explored ‘rules’ regarding classical names and biblical names. I think the jury will never come back. And should the word “biblical“ have a capital letter or not? Who knows?
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 26, 2021 10:38:37 GMT
[…] should the word “biblical“ have a capital letter or not? Who knows? According to the OED 2nd edn (published 1989), the use of an initial capital on biblical was, even by that time, obsolete or rare; however, the American Oxford still lists it as an option – perhaps because the Americans seem rather too fond of initial caps, not unlike the Germans. Even bible itself only warrants an initial cap if referring to the actual Bible, that Christian book of myths; if referring to, say, the authoritative user manual for an appliance no initial cap is required – e.g. the computer-user's bible.
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Post by Dave Miller on Oct 26, 2021 22:06:30 GMT
Vv. As I said, I certainly prefer it without the apostrophe S but, since the Brooklyn Nets is a team (singular), I think it is legitimate by some conventions. This has been rumbling around in my head several times today. One problem is the definite article: it’s the Brooklyn Nets. Whereas it’s just Manchester United, or Leeds (not the Manchester United or the Leeds). We can say “he’s one of the Brooklyn Nets”, but not “he’s one of Manchester United”. To me, this shows that even the Americans, who do not follow the British tendency to regard a team as the plurality of its members, regard the Nets as plural. I feel, too, that to look at the “rules” of apostrophe construction, à la doctrine of John Richards, is to miss a bigger force. We are daily surrounded, in the hundreds if not thousands, by cases in which apostrophes are used to indicate “possession”. Many are apostrophe-ess and many are ess-apostrophe. Almost never, though, do we encounter the plural-ess-apostrophe-ess. I don’t recall ever having met it, other than by the simple mistake of a child or someone learning basic English. When a construction just doesn’t occur in a language, it’s not part of that language.
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 27, 2021 20:45:23 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Oct 27, 2021 22:52:24 GMT
The perils of th-fronting Martin Luther nails his ninety-five feces to the church door in Wittenberg, 1517
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