12-step program for apostrophe abuse

"Programme," actually, because Lauren is British.

This is just beautiful. I'm reading and grading papers this afternoon, and I just wrote, for the umpteenth time, "Do not use an apostrophe to create plurals!" Since I can't drink for a few more hours, stumbling on this while taking a brief Apostrophe Abuse break was, from a mental health standpoint, most fortuitous.

Step 1 --

1. Admit you have a problem - It’s ok, you’re in the safety of your anonymous interwebbed life. I won’t know. Just admit to yourself, out loud:

My name is X and I don’t know how to use an apostrophe. I force them into plural words where they don’t want to go. Yes, that’s me, I commit these crimes because I don’t know any better. I want help.

Steps 2-12 here.

advertising: fooling all the people (5)

New York Times, November 28, 1897



A special Macy's and Gimbels edition of advertisements that used some variation of Abraham Lincoln's famous saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Click on images to make them bigger.









New York Times, December 6, 1930

afromentioned

Yesterday morning, on Car Talk, one of the guys (Tommy, I think) used the word "aforementioned," except he pronounced it "afromentioned." I've heard him do it before, and I've heard it from one or two other speakers.

OK, I understand that people sometimes reverse sounds when they talk, and it's especially believable when they're reading from a slightly-unfamiliar script. But no one would make this mistake in writing, right?

Wrong. A quick Google search turns up over 1200 "afromentioned" and variations. Not all are wrong. Someone uses "Afromentioned" as a screen name; a screen name "afro" leads to the construction "afro mentioned...."; and I think a few of these were intended as jokes. But most meant "aforementioned."

A few examples:

The Afro mentioned cowboy . . . . (This is from a transcript of a Katie Couric on-air piece. The short video is available, and yes, she says "afro mentioned.")

Next to the afro-mentioned McQueen and Robinson, there's the always reliable Karl Malden . . . . (from a comment on imdb.com)

This layer 27 may not be formed thick owing to the afro-mentioned reason . . . . (from a US patent)

A sixty (60) day notice explanation for vote will be made to the afro mentioned members.

i believe the afro mentioned list of songs is pretty good.

I searched the aforementioned "afromentioned" in the Eggcorn Database, but I don't see it there.

The Responsibilities of American Citizenship

A short film I'm going to show my class on Monday. Produced by the National Education Program and distributed in 1955, the film vividly shows how the Cold War affected American society. There's so much to talk about here--religion (notice that "fundamental belief in God" is at the base of the building blocks that support "the American way of life"), economic prosperity, bad haircuts, and so much more. An infuriating line is at 6:25: "Private ownership diffuses the wealth and economic power over the very widest area." What??



video from the amazing Internet Archive

Booker T. and the DBTs

Through the magic that is Internet Archive, four songs from a great show: Booker T. (formerly of Booker T. and the MGs) and the Drive-By Truckers, April 1 at Atlanta's Variety Playhouse. Booker T's new album, Potato Hole, will be released in a few weeks, and they're out promoting it. This was the opening show of the tour. From here, they go to Australia. "Pound It Out" is from the new album; "Green Onions" and "Time Is Tight" are Booker T. classics; "Gravity's Gone" is one of my favorite DBT songs. (DBT played a long second set.) The next day I told folks that I was smiling so hard for those first 75 minutes that my face hurt.

Pound It Out


Green Onions


Time Is Tight


Gravity's Gone

advertising: fooling all the people (4)

Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1959



















A fourth set of advertisements that used some variation of Abraham Lincoln's famous saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Click on images to make them bigger.


Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1921






















New York Times, February 11, 1901























Boston Daily Globe, January 18, 1897





















Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1907

advertising: fooling all the people (3)

Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1955



















For your enjoyment, another small collection of advertisements that used some variation of Abraham Lincoln's famous saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Click on images to make them bigger.



New York Times, February 12, 1902




















Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1923




















Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1895




















Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1943

five Civil War historians

Over at A. Lincoln Blog, Brian Dirck writes about his recent speaking engagements (see, he's a Lincoln scholar, and this was the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, so he's had a lot of invitations to speak), including one here at Kennesaw State University. I especially like the photo, which shows the four speakers at our day-long symposium: William Cooper, Brian Dirck, Stephen Berry, and George Rable. The guy in the middle is my colleague John Fowler, director of KSU's Center for the Study of the Civil War Era.

Somewhere, over the Bridge to Nowhere

An interesting update this past weekend on the old notion that characters and settings in L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) matched certain real-life people and places in late nineteenth-century America: NPR's Weekend Edition has an interview with historian Quentin Taylor, who suggests a few analogies between the book and modern America:

Sarah Palin — whom Taylor describes as "attractive, wholesome [and] somewhat provincial" — could be Dorothy, while Rep. Barney Frank might be cast in the role of the Cowardly Lion. "Underneath all the bluster, [the Lion is] really a sweetheart," says Taylor.

Though Taylor's not certain where President Obama fits into Baum's novel, he does have a role for the speaker of the House: "There's ... one last character not in the film, but in the book — this is the queen of the field mice. I thought that Speaker Nancy Pelosi fit this the best. After all, she presides over a collection of diminutive, chattering rodents."

NPR has a link to the five-minute interview with Taylor. If you missed it last Satureday, it's worth checking out!

advertising: fooling all the people (2)

Washington Post, December 4, 1946



For your enjoyment, a small collection of advertisements that used some variation of Abraham Lincoln's famous saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Click on images to make them bigger.




American Journal of the Medical Sciences, December 1893














New York Times, December 5, 1906


















Christian Science Monitor, October 21, 1924















New York Times, May 29, 1934

















Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1897

Dr. Seuss goes to war

How about that? Dr. Seuss's wartime cartoons are available online. Good stuff!

hat tip to More or Less Bunk

advertising: fooling all the people (1)

New York Times, February 12, 1910


For your enjoyment, a small collection of advertisements that used some variation of Abraham Lincoln's famous saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." Click images to make them bigger. More later.





New York Times, August 25, 1895





















New York Times, February 10, 1915






















Los Angeles Times, October 26, 1914























Boston Daily Globe, June 16, 1895






















Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1931

y’all’s or y’alls?

How does one form the possessive of y’all: with ’s, or with an s and no apostrophe? I sort of want the answer to be y’all’s, because I like the way it looks, and I like that it sometimes makes my students mad when I write it that way on the board (without telling them that it’s really wrong), and because it’s one word that illustrates both uses of the apostrophe (to form both contractions and possessives).

But alas....

Personal or definite pronouns--that is, pronouns that refer to something definite and that have a clear antecedent--do not have apostrophes in their possessive forms. Examples of these pronouns are he, she, you, and it. The possessive form of these pronouns: his, her, your, and its (not he’s, and of course not it’s, which is not a possessive but is a contraction for it is).

Some pronouns, called indefinite pronouns, do use an apostrophe to form the possessive. Example: anybody, a pronoun that, unlike those above, does not refer to anything specific and has no real antecedent. (“Anybody can grow up to be president.”) The possessive of anybody is anybody’s, with an apostrophe. Other examples of indefinite pronouns: everybody, someone, and nobody.

But y'all is not an apostrophe-taking indefinite pronoun; it is a personal pronoun, and hence the possessive does not get an apostrophe: y’alls.

Another good question: Why am I bothering with this? Because I came across the following today in Wikipedia’s entry on y’all: “There is some debate on the spelling of the possessive form of y’all. Some will spell it ‘y’all’s’ while others will spell it ‘y’alls.’ As there does not seem to be an official answer, it is a matter of personal preference.”

So here you have it, Wikipedia, the official answer: y’alls.

(And yes, I do claim to be official when it comes to y’all.)

the real reason I read Andrew Sullivan

Sure, the Daily Dish offers a great discussion of political and economic matters. But what keeps me coming back is stuff like this (all links from yesterday):

dead people twittering: "Poke around and you'll find a whole bunch of dead people on Twitter, like Susan Sontag, George Washington and Sigmund Freud. It's fascinating to digest the life's work of a great thinker in 140 character chunks. Some are like performances — others are really trying to converse in the Twitterverse, ‘in the voice of’ or otherwise. Gandhi just uses the platform to spew quotes. Most fascinating is Charles Darwin, who is tweeting and blogging in real time on board the HMS Beagle (via his 1839 ‘Voyage of the Beagle’ diary).”

when Jesus rode dinosaurs: a page from a creationist coloring book

NASCAR as religion: “Is your spiritual engine running on fumes? Do you feel like you're falling behind in the race of life, or that you've hit the wall? Get ready to start your engine once again. In The Race: From Pit Row to Victory Lane, author Rick Lemons offers timely and comprehensive insights that will fuel your relationship with God. Join him as he parallels the Christian life to NASCAR racing.”

comparing Lincoln and Davis

Today is Kennesaw State University's New Interpretations of the American Civil War Symposium. This year's topic: Envisioning America: The Leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. We have four of the best Lincoln and Davis scholars around: William Cooper, George Rable, Brian Dirck, and Stephen Berry.

Mildred Lewis Rutherford, state historian of the United Daughters of the Confederacy for Georgia, made that same comparison almost a century ago in a little booklet she published. Given her affiliation, perhaps it's not a surprise that Lincoln came in second. Davis, she said, was a Christian, a humanitarian, a philanthropist, a patriot, a statesman, and a scholar. As for the U.S. president: "Shall Lincoln be held up as an exemplar for the imitation of our American Youth? We cannot hold him up as a GENTLEMAN OF REFINEMENT AND CULTURE.... We cannot commend Lincoln for integrity of character.... We cannot hold him up as humane or tender hearted.... The evidence is very strong against him as a VIOLATOR OF THE CONSTITUTION." And so on.

Well, I guess that settles it. No need for the meeting now.

information age prayer

I was trying to tell a student the other day about Dial-A-Prayer, the telephone service that you would call to hear a 30-second or so generic prayer. Needless to say, she had no idea what I was talking about. (Dial-A-Prayer started back in the 1950s. I remember it growing up. I guess it went the way of--well, the way of the dial telephone.)

Well, now there's Information Age Prayer, "a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget." $3.95 a month-- but check the "Popular Prayers" link for some special deals.

Everything you wanted to know about St. Patrick's Day

... at Everything Is History.