Does Not Compute

It's not uncommon to see in newspapers stuff like "homeowners insurance" without an apostrophe. It's not a mistake. The idea is that you can look at "homeowners" a descriptor and not a possessor.

But how, then, to explain Childrens Hospital Los Angeles?

It doesn't work the same way. While "homeowners insurance" could be insurance that pertains to homeowners, "childrens hospital" would be a hospital that pertains to children -- not childrens.

I also saw a reference to a Womens and Childrens Hospital.

I believe there's a strong trend in this direction. For some time now, publications and businesses have been seizing on justifications for omitting the apostrophe. They don't want to use these apostrophes, so they find reason they don't have to. But now it seems that, more and more, people aren't bothering with the "this is really a modifier" justification. They prefer no justification at all.

I'm not complain', mind you. And I'm certainly not trying to stop the trend. (I know how productive those little campaigns are.) I just don't know what it will mean when the dust settles. Will "womens" and "childrens" start appearing in dictionaries as modifiers? Will grammar books start to acknowledge phantom apostrophes (kind of like the zero relative you create when you change "I know that you like me" to "I know you like me")?

I just don't know.

More Words I'm Looking Up

beloved

I just came across in a document I'm editing: "... those noise-cancelling headphones beloved of frequent flyers."

I don't remember ever hearing "beloved of" before. I thought it was always "beloved by." I tried some wondering and Googling, but the hits I got didn't help: 1.5 million for "beloved by," but most of them followed by the name Toni Morrison. 1.1 million hits for "beloved of," including lots of constructions like, "His beloved of twenty years."

Still, at the top of the hit list was a link to a freedictionary.com page that included under "Examples from Classic Literature": There were Emperors beloved of literary men, Emperors beloved of the people ...


Still learning something new every day ...

Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional, cleverly named series on words I'm looking up)

chitter: v. to twitter

How schweet.

Thangs a Super (Boss) Might Should Know

A fraudster posing as West Virginia's governor got caught because a letter he sent out was riddled with bad grammar.

Here's the story: http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2009/09/17/police_wva_man_impersonated_gov_to_steal_info/

Here's the moral:
If your grammar's so bad that West Virginians notice, you should stick to shoplifting.

Words that Inexplicably Rub Me the Wrong Way

sugar

I'm not sure why I hate the word sugar. Lord knows I eat enough of the stuff. But, when spoken, it really grates on my ear. Those consonants just don't belong so close together. Shggrr. It's so fuzzy and tongue-twisting compared to Spanish's crisp azucar and French's oh-so-French sucre.

And don't get me started on Suge Knight. I realize that spelling it "Shoog" or "Shugg" was not an option. But was it really better to spell it in a way that suggests the pronunciation "Sooge"? He should have stuck with Marion. Now there's a name with real street cred, courtesy of one D.C. mayor.

It's 11 p.m. -- Do You Know Where Your Chicken Is? (Or: Do You Think I'm Anastos Boy?)

Longtime New York TV newsman Ernie Anastos recently told a colleague, on air, something that sounds a whole lot like "keep fucking that chicken." The context makes it more baffling. It seems he may have been trying to express something akin to "Keep up the good work."

I've never understood the mindless banter of local broadcast news nougatnoggins. But this is a step beyond.

Sure, he may have said "plucking." But I prefer an Urban Dictionary-type interpretation. Or perhaps his colleague really is henpecked.

This Job Is Gettin' to Me

Before I started copy editing, I never would have questioned this lede from an AP story:

President Barack Obama on Thursday shelved a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile defense plan that has been a major irritant in relations with Russia.

But these days I can't even pay attention to the meaning of the words because I'm too distracted by: a plan for a plan.

I 'spose I would have edited that to read: "... shelved a Bush-era Eastern European missle defense plan ..."