The apostrophe s

[Reverend]

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My colleagues and I were at the fax/copier machine area yesterday, including that sexy colleague. I noticed that the zip at the back of her short skirt was about a third undone. I didn't say anything to her there. Went back to my seat, wrote the following note :

"The zip on your skirt is not done properly"

... and left it on her desk. I went to make some coffee. Back at my desk, I see a note (from her) :

"Really? I can't see. Zips usually all the way up. Can you help me zip it up? "

Read the note again. Buzzed her on the phone, with :

"Anthony here. You know that you should write Zip's usually all the way up, with an apostrophe s when using the word zip, don't you? Tsk, tsk, what poor English "

She said : "<silence for a while> You're very weird, Anthony. I'll do the zip myself." She puts the phone down.

Me goes "Huh?" and then realized what a fool I'd been. Sigh.
===================================

Okay, ignore my stupidity.

When should the "apostrophe s" be used? Is it to indicate possession, or an abbreviation for "is"?

Which is correct -- "The GFFX's heatsink is huge" or "The GFFXs heatsink is huge" ?

Note : Again, ignore how stupid I was... I'm suffering already.

 

[Ilfirin]

"The GFFX's heatsink is huge" is correct.
"The GFFX's heatsink's huge" would also be correct.

's means "is" whenever it doesn't mean possession, basically.

AFAIK just s on a noun always means plural (unless it's part of the word itself, makes it another part of speech, is 'it', etc).

Snakes = multiple snakes
Snake's = whatever follows belongs to Snake.
My snake's dead = My snake is dead

It's all contextual.

 

[bystander]

When should the "apostrophe s" be used? Is it to indicate possession, or an abbreviation for "is"?

Which is correct -- "The GFFX's heatsink is huge" or "The GFFXs heatsink is huge" ?

"The GFFX's heatsink is huge" is the correct one. As that to me indicates that the huge heatsink belongs to the GFFX. The "apostrophe s" is used to indicate posession IMO. The position of the apostrophe is also important as GFFXs' means something slightly different to GFFX's (I can't quite remember what difference is though).

 

[demalion]

I'm sorry, I can't ignore you posting something that mean-spirited. I mean, it actually jumped out at me, grabbed me by the throat, and shook me bodily until I started to cry and was coughing and spluttering uncontrollably.

Hmm...or maybe that was laughter?



I've only managed equivalent foolishness in a short period of disorientation...never with a written message, that I read twice, then picked up a phone to call the person who wrote it.
Well, not yet atleast.

I guess I should maybe try to answer your question, though.

 

[epicstruggle]

I cannot believe you actually tried to correct her grammar. I made a similar mistake with my wife and spent the night alone on my side of the bed with no covers.

later,

 

[Gnep]

Hehe Rev you really amuse me sometimes

The only real exception to watch out for is "it" - It is become it's; when using the posessive it though there is no apostrophe - so "it's red" is "it is red" and "its red end" is "the red end of it"...

Oh and maybe you should take the office flirt test... (can't remember the link at the mo though...)

Gnep

 

[Ilfirin]

Oh right, the 'it' case, forgot to mention that one. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[Deepak]

but the question is why her skirt's zip was little undone....

 

[Simon F]

==================================
My colleagues and I were at the fax/copier machine area yesterday, including that sexy colleague. I noticed that the zip at the back of her short skirt was about a third undone. I didn't say anything to her there. Went back to my seat, wrote the following note :

"The zip on your skirt is not done properly"

at which point I was expecting you to say you got your face slapped...

... "Really? I can't see. Zips usually all the way up."

Well apart from not writing "It zips ....", that looks ok to me.

"You know that you should write Zip's usually all the way up, with an apostrophe s when using the word zip, don't you?

Ohh no. You should certainly not write that. "Zips" here is a verb, much like "Reverend runs a web site"

 

[PC-Engine]

There is also the plural possesive which would be s'. For example "the dog's owner" implies one dog, however, "the dogs' owner" implies more than one. For example, "the two dogs' owner was a guy named Joe".

 

[nutball]

http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

 

[Ilfirin]

Hope you don't mind if I ask a bit of an off-topic question in your thread Rev

What's with spelling "Optimization" as "Optimisation". I see it done all the time, is the latter a European spelling or something of the sort, or is it just a mistake? Dictionary.com nor winword.exe have any entry for "Optimisation".

 

[Simon F]

Hope you don't mind if I ask a bit of an off-topic question in your thread Rev

What's with spelling "Optimization" as "Optimisation". I see it done all the time, is the latter a European spelling or something of the sort, or is it just a mistake? Dictionary.com nor winword.exe have any entry for "Optimisation".

It's spelled that way in my winword.exe..... what dictionary are you using?

Hee hee. This reminds me of a second year team programming assignment back in Aus. The project was for "The Terribly British Book Company" who wanted to translate works published by "The Ugly American Spelling Corp" into English Apart from managing a big dictionary of corrections, it also had to support user-defined rules like "ize->ise"

 

[Ilfirin]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Optimisation ->

No entry found for Optimisation

Typing it into my American MS Word leads to the uber annoying red-squiggly line with the suggestion of changing it to "Optimization".

 

[Simon F]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Optimisation ->

No entry found for Optimisation

Typing it into my American MS Word leads to the uber annoying red-squiggly line with the suggestion of changing it to "Optimization".

Exactly. Try UK or Australian (I use a dictionary I bought from the Australian Macquarie Dictionary mob)

 

[Ilfirin]

Ok, so "Optimisation" and "Optimization" are both valid spellings. Thanks.

 

[MuFu]

When should the "apostrophe s" be used? Is it to indicate possession, or an abbreviation for "is"?

Which is correct -- "The GFFX's heatsink is huge" or "The GFFXs heatsink is huge" ?

"The GFFX's heatsink is huge" is the correct one. As that to me indicates that the huge heatsink belongs to the GFFX. The "apostrophe s" is used to indicate posession IMO. The position of the apostrophe is also important as GFFXs' means something slightly different to GFFX's (I can't quite remember what difference is though).

"The GFFXs' heatsinks are huge".

MuFu.

 

[Ilfirin]

atleast

While we're at it, "atleast" is another one that MS word says doesn't exist and instead suggests "at least". I've always accepted the latter as the only correct one (along with "a lot" as opposed to "alot"), but perhaps this is another grammatical/spelling issue that varies with location?

[edit]And also, can not 's also mean 'does' as in "What's the debug output say?" = "What does the debug output say?"

 

[Simon F]

atleast

While we're at it, "atleast" is another one that MS word says doesn't exist and instead suggests "at least".

That's correct. That spacebar can be darnedtrickytohitsometimes.

I've always accepted the latter as the only correct one (along with "a lot" as opposed to "alot"), but perhaps this is another grammatical/spelling issue that varies with location?

Unless you meant the verb "allot" rather than "a lot", then yes the space is missing.

And also, can not 's also mean 'does' as in "What's the debug output say?" = "What does the debug output say?"

Hmm... quite possibly, but I'm no grammarian.

 

[Saem]

My colleagues and I were at the fax/copier machine area yesterday, including that sexy colleague. I noticed that the zip at the back of her short skirt was about a third undone. I didn't say anything to her there. Went back to my seat, wrote the following note :

"The zip on your skirt is not done properly"

... and left it on her desk. I went to make some coffee. Back at my desk, I see a note (from her) :

"Really? I can't see. Zips usually all the way up. Can you help me zip it up? icon_wink.gif "

As soon as I ready that last line in the quote, I was wondering whether you were taking this from some porn script. I half expected a, "Here, let me help you with that" *music starts in the back ground.*