[Elecraft] K3 - Come on Simon...

[TDY]

Hi All,

Now, you do have to admit that Fred has something of a point here.  Rarely 
does a missing apostrophe leave the reader completely confused as to the 
meaning.  I tend to be somewhat fanatical about the english language myself, 
but I do sympathize with his position.

I am somewhat anal about usage of the comma.  My english teachers drummed 
"comma fault" into my head to the point where I often get obsessive about 
re-reading things to be sure I haven't committed the "ultimate sin" and left 
out a comma.  I'm sure it causes me to put commas into a sentence that need 
not be there.

It doesn't surprise me that the brits have a society to preserve the 
apostrophe.  They claim full rights and privileges over the language, and 
are often pretty critical of how we have bastardized the language here in 
the colonies.  Unfortunately, in many cases they are right.  But, as I often 
tell my brit friends, "You are the masters of excess!"  Look at all those 
vowels they insert which are completely unnecessary in my opinion.  "Labour" 
instead of "Labor", "honour" instead of "honor", etc.  It's beyond me why 
they don't take all those unnecessary vowels and, in the interest of 
conservation and good will, donate them to some place like Poland where 
vowels are sorely lacking!  Another place in need is Wales.

Anyway, back to Fred's problem.  I think a compromise is in order, and I 
have a suggestion--one with which probably nobody will be happy.  But here 
it is anyway.  If you truly feel that inserting an apostrophe midstream in a 
word like "don't" is a pain in the neck, why not just wait until  your 
message is finished and tack on a bunch of apostrophes at the end.  Then the 
reader, if so inclined, can go back and insert them as necessary.  After 
all, if they know when one is missing, then they will know where to put 
them!  But, in fairness, if you opt to do it this way, you need to make sure 
you put just the correct number of apostrophes at the end.  After all, you 
don't want to drive people nuts trying to find where to put some extra 
apostrophe you might have tacked on (or do you)!  It also helps to assure us 
that you really did know better, and just didn't want to take the time to 
insert them along the way.  It sort of makes a game out of it.  Actually, 
it's already a game of sorts trying to interpret some of these emails with 
all the missing or misspelled words, etc.  But this gives the game a little 
structure.

What do you think?

Dave W7AQK

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Jensen" <k6dgw at foothill.net>
To: "Elecraft Reflector" <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 - Come on Simon...



> The apostrophe is an aberration in the English language, "up with which I 
> wish I did not have to put."  [Apologies to Winston for the liberty of a 
> misquote].  We use it for so many different things and meanings that it 
> gets misused often ... or usually.  If it can't be said with 26 letters 
> and 10 digits, maybe it doesnt need to be said that way, or maybe we need 
> a new word.  In fact, I have a modest example ...
>
> "apostrification" [n. Am. English, from the Old Fred] 1. The unnecessary 
> usage of a really small punctuation mark in places where it is not 
> required;  2. The foundation for formation of irrelevant organizations 
> whose goal is to preserve a linguistic irrelevancy, not to be confused 
> with the Second Class Operators Club whose members often ignore it.
>
> 73,
>
> Fred K6DGW
> - Northern California Contest Club
> - CU in the 2008 Cal QSO Party  4-5 Oct 08
> - www.cqp.org
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