Grammar Police Triumph!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bri
  • Start date Start date

Bri

Bri

Bri

Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2003
Posts
4,839
Location
Sunny Teesside
Rosa Prince Political Correspondent said:
YOU'LL FAIL GCSE FOR USING THE GROCER'S APOSTROPHE

EXAM chiefs will fail GCSE pupils if they commit "the grocer's apostrophe" punctuation howler, it was revealed yesterday.

Students won't get higher than a grade D in GCSE English if they put apostrophes in the wrong place.

The grocer's apostrophe got its name because of the common sight on the High Street of shops selling "apple's" and "banana's". Such plural nouns do not require an apostrophe. But it should be used in words where letters are missing - as in "don't" - or to indicate possession - as in "John's dog".

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is piloting the new "functional literacy" tests this year - to be up and running across the country by 2009.

Under the plans, no pupil would be able to get a grade C in GCSE English without being able to "punctuate accurately using commas, apostrophes and inverted commas".

Lynne Truss - author of the best-selling Eats, Shoots and Leaves - said she was delighted by the move.
Click to expand...

LINK

Tremendous! :D
 
Nice :). Although, to be fair, when I was at school, we were taught stuff like Johns' dog, to show it belonged to him, and John's dog would mean John is dog. <shrug>.
 
The apostrophe is only placed at the end of a word that ends with an S IIRC. e.g. Jesus' disciples.
 
Bracco said:
Nice :). Although, to be fair, when I was at school, we were taught stuff like Johns' dog, to show it belonged to him, and John's dog would mean John is dog. <shrug>.
Click to expand...

That's because a lot of teachers' English is crap too.

This is very good news anyway :)

Also note here..

The grocer's apostrophe got its name because of the common sight on the High Street of shops selling "apple's" and "banana's". Such plural nouns do not require an apostrophe. But it should be used in words where letters are missing - as in "don't" - or to indicate possession - as in "John's dog".
Click to expand...

Its is correct there, but most people wrongly write it's..
 
Last edited:
I'm a bit 50-50 on this.

What if a student writes an exceptional piece of work in the exam and puts one apostrophe in the wrong place?

Getting just a D because of one mistake would be terrible. It can’t be that clear-cut.
 
Agreed I think the odd error here and there should be ok, but if the student's piece is littered with mistakes then he/she should be punished. I mean e.g. French and Spanish students write very well in their own language why shouldn't us Brits?
 
Mr_L said:
I'm a bit 50-50 on this.

What if a student writes an exceptional piece of work in the exam and puts one apostrophe in the wrong place?

Getting just a D because of one mistake would be terrible. It can’t be that clear-cut.
Click to expand...

I doubt very much that they would if there were just one mistake, but if their work were riddled with such errors then I think it's fair.
Certain abilities must be displayed in order to move up through grade boundaries. For example, I don't believe a C grade can be achieved if there is no evidence of paragraphing. Showing an inability to use a basic and necessary piece of punctuation in your work should be similarly penalised.

Hoorah! :D
 
dirtydog said:
That's because a lot of teachers' English is crap too.

This is very good news anyway :)

Also note here..



Its is correct there, but most people wrongly write it's..
Click to expand...

I was taught that you put one if there is a letter missing so it is becomes it's.
 
Amleto said:
What's the difference between an apostophe and an inverted comma? :confused:
Click to expand...

An apostrophe is a mark used to denote possession or omitted letters.
An inverted comma is a synonym for a quotation mark, which are placed around words to reflect their being said by another.

Energize said:
I was taught that you put one if there is a letter missing so it is becomes it's.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is can be correctly contracted to "it's". dirtydog was referring to the common mistake of inserting an unnecessary apostrophe in "its", the pronoun for expressing posession of a noun without a gender. It's wrong in the same way that "hi's" instead of "his" would be absurdly wrong
 
Last edited:
Energize said:
I was taught that you put one if there is a letter missing so it is becomes it's.
Click to expand...

Correct, and a lot of people do that, but a lot of those same people also wrongly write it's as the possessive of it. It really grates when I see it :/
 
I don't think anyone's suggesting you'll get a D for one mistake, you simply need to demonstrate an ability to punctuate correctly in order to get a C - you've still demonstrated that ability if you get it right 15 times and wrong twice.
 
I've seen some very funny mistakes like this - more funny because the writers don't realise.

On a video game end screen: "Your dead" (What about my dead?)

Graffito: "******'s out." to which someone had replied "But he'll be back soon."
 
greenlizard0 said:
Agreed I think the odd error here and there should be ok, but if the student's piece is littered with mistakes then he/she should be punished. I mean e.g. French and Spanish students write very well in their own language why shouldn't us Brits?
Click to expand...
This is because, as I'm sure many people know, writing is for mug's.
 
Excellent. Its about time - the number of time's I ve seen ''s used in the wrong place really is' a'stounding.

I hope it isn't clear cut though. Because lots of people get it wrong but it's also down to the quality of English teaching. We only had one teacher who I would regard as Seriously Knowing Her Stuff - quite a few of the others commonly made small mistakes like this point.

Fact is that correct basic punctuation is ridiculously rare, so hooray that someone Up There finally noticed :)
 
Bracco said:
Nice :). Although, to be fair, when I was at school, we were taught stuff like Johns' dog, to show it belonged to him, and John's dog would mean John is dog. <shrug>.
Click to expand...

same lol
 
This is great news I hope it leads to better punctuation on the internet there's nothing worse than reading a post with no commas or full stops in it so the post reads like one long sentence it hurts my head to read them especially when theirs bad spellings and gramour in it to.
 
Amleto said:
What's the difference between an apostophe and an inverted comma? :confused:
Click to expand...

A typographical one. There are technically two kinds of apostrophe; the "vertical", like the one on your keyboard, and the "punctuation", like the one you'd write by hand. "Inverted comma" usually refers to a quotation mark, and differs depending on whether or not it's at the start or end of the quote (‘ vs. ’, “ vs. ”) - you might refer to them as "sixes and nines" or for double quotation marks "66 and 99". The "punctuation apostrophe" is the same as the closing single quotation mark, ’.

On computers, most people use vertical apostrophes instead of punctuation question marks or either of the two single quotation marks, since most (if not all) keyboards only come with vertical apostrophes. It's just the same as people using three full-stops (...) instead of the ellipsis symbol (…), since keyboard don't come with those either :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom