191–200 of 233 posts
I have a street in a town near me which grammatically should be called St. Thomas' road. However, the street signs call it St. Thomas road at the north end and St. Thomas's road at the south end.
Not quite related to apostrophes, but I feel the need to point out my favourite street name of all time (as read on a street sign): St John St (-> Saint John Street)
As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid... # Standard data types used in BS 7666 CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters ... If I had to guess, alphanumeric is interpreted as [0-9a-z]. The s…
I believe standards are the minimum, not the maximum to implement, don't you think so?! Why those dare to implement - and explain - standards who cannot comprehend their purpose?....
As a thought experiment, how far beyond the 'maximum' is acceptable? Latin letters with diacritics? Cyrillic letters? Arabic letters? Chinese logographs? Emojis? Would you expect all systems which are standard-compliant to be able to handle all of the above?
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lol no. arguably the word ain't is more proper English than Chris' or boss'
It is trivial to find more than sufficiently authoritative source that cover the rules that make "Chris'" and "boss'" perfectly value contracted possessives in English. [1] However, it's English: there isn't just one rule , another rule can also be valid and might be the one you're familiar with on a day to day basis. That doesn't mean any other way to say or write the same thing is wrong, it's just a pattern you nev…
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Did it support þ? That would be the best-known example of written English being changed to accommodate a printing press rather than the other way around.
No. But that doesn't really fit since þ had mostly died out by the 1300s, with only few remaining uses by Caxton's printing - long before the 1800s. I also wouldn't call those typewriters or cheap printing presses.
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That's because you're not going to Tesco the registered company, you're going to (one of) Tesco's (shops). It's just traditional and logical grammar, not misnaming.
This is not true. We don't apply this "rule" to any other establishment, e.g. people don't say "I'm going to Burger King's" or "I'm going to Costa's". There's nothing to analyze: "Tesco's" is just wrong . It's not the name of the business.
I agree it's not consistent, but who ever accused English of being that?! My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
(But as others have replied to you, it's also more common than just Tesco, definitely including "Costa's" for lots of people.)
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Thank you, I'll remember that next time I pay a visit to Sainbury's's!
I agree it's not consistent, but who ever accused English of being that?! My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
There's been an historical transition from small chains owned by individuals (e.g. the Victorian Mr John Sainsbury) to big brands (e.g. Superdrug), hasn't there.
The possessive apostrophe was appropriate for the former but surely less so nowadays. I would guess "Sainsbury's" was a rebrand intended to reflect tradition.
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I agree it's not consistent, but who ever accused English of being that?! My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
I agree swores. Your comment did say 'traditional' and my comment was facetious. There's been an historical transition from small chains owned by individuals (e.g. the Victorian Mr John Sainsbury) to big brands (e.g. Superdrug), hasn't there. The possessive apostrophe was appropriate for the former but surely less so nowadays. I would guess "Sainsbury's" was a rebrand intended to reflect tradition.
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I believe standards are the minimum, not the maximum to implement, don't you think so?! Why those dare to implement - and explain - standards who cannot comprehend their purpose?....
Standards are just that. You can say that you can standards are the 'minimum, not the maximum', but if the standard says only alphanumeric characters are permitted (and it turns out this isn't a very well written standard, so there's a load of discussion possible on this point), an implementation that allows non-alphanumeric characters is wrong. As a thought experiment, how far beyond the 'maximum' is acceptable? Lat…
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/111148/do-any-uk...