By far the most common mistakes I see when grading papers from college students, both traditional and non-traditional age, are using an apostrophe for plural and no apostrophe for possessive, which puts plural possessive beyond the pale. Of course, they'd probably write that as beyond the pail.
Mark
> To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
> From: jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:52:27 +0000
> Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re: Where have you gone Rara-Avis? (Food for Thought)
>
>
>
> --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Jeff Vorzimmer <jvorzimmer@...> wrote:
> The British are more
> > literal-minded, which often comes through in the usage of the language.
> >
>
> They are? That's a strange claim. Hard to verify one way or the other, though. To me the nest contain's many hornets, and the expression clearly refers to a plural, so the English version would be accurate. On the other hand, maybe the singular Hornet is made to stand for its kind, which would explain the singular usage.
>
> If you ask me, it's time to kill the few spelling differences that exist between varieties of English. They serve no purpose. Everybody speaks his own dialect, but writing things differently benefits nobody. Could anybody get very worked up about the non-difference between realize and realise, etc.?
>
> Is his question a hornet's nest or a hornets' nest? Or should we just drop the silly apostrophe and start saying hornets nest? It would be a nice simplfication.
>
> Best,
>
> mrt
>
>
>
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