Re: OT: "Gissa a Job!" & Location

[Ian Oliver <ioliver.lists@xxxxxxx>]

In article <NFBBKIIGELIMFOMJFBNCKEFGCKAA.phillip.harris1@xxxxxxx>,
Phil
Harris wrote:
> > >The possessive form of an indefinite pronoun. The personal
pronouns
> > >(and in particular the third person forms) seem to cause some
people
> > >problems when they try and form the possessives, which is odd
as the
> > >rules are really quite simple.
> >
> > As someone who is dyslexic (why is that so difficult to spell), I
honestly
> > haven't got a clue what the paragraph says!
>
> I haven't a clue either and I'm not!

Pronouns are words used in the place of nouns. Personal pronouns are things
like I, We, You, They. The third person ones are He, She, It. The
possessive
forms of these are His, Hers and Its. Note that none of these have an
apostrophe yet some people use one for "It's", which causes
confusion as this
is the diminutive of "It is". I often wonder why those who use
"It's" don't
also use "Hi's" and "Her's"

English can get wacky (and therefore interesting) in this area. Consider
the
sentence, "When someone gets on an aeroplane they don't expect to
die."  The
indefinite pronoun "someone" is clearly singular yet we have used
the plural
subjective personal "they". Many consider this is only correct in
informal
English and the preferred form is "When someone gets on an aeroplane
he
doesn't expect to die."  But now we have the gender not matching the
antecedent breaking another rule (though this is allowed) and to keep
everyone
happy we should say, "When someone gets on an aeroplane he or she does
not
expect to die" but if we all used such correct English we'd be dead
before the
end of the paragraph! Oh, you could always use "One" but as you
then have to
use it throughout you end up sounding like Prince Charles.

BTW Someone asked about whether to write "CVs" or
"CV's"  You only use an
apostrophe before the pluralising s in these cases -
1) Forming the plural of a letter or number. "She got four A's"
"I rolled two
6's"
2) Forming a plural of an abbreviation that is rendered with fullstops.
"Ph.D.'s"
3) Where the abbreviation ends in an s. "SOS's"

My personal preference is to avoid the apostrophe for everything except
case
(1) and to rewrite or reform to avoid cases (2) and (3).

Anyway, we may be guilty of drifting off topic and I admit it's mostly my
fault!

Ian Oliver
Sunny Leeds, UK
Using Java on Tini for control via Dallas 1-wire