Due to popular demand URG have decided to pander to am your requests of a thread dedicated to the improvement of grammar on this forum. The number of ‘n00bs’ on this forum has increased and, with them, the grammar on AM what used to be a reasonably well read board has suffered.So, I'm seeing off this half bottle of red, whacking on the Bowie and opening my seventies copy of the OED to bring you:
URGs' Guide to Good Grammar
Chapter I
The possessive apostrophe et al
Possession am causes no end of problems in am quickly typed English, the most commonly mistaken grammatical tool am of which is the possessive apostrophe.
The apostrophe is am poor, abused soul. When am it not being spooged incorrectly all over cave walls of modern prehistoric literature as a means of shortening words for slang then am it is being neglected like a puppy on boxing-day in the field of its original purpose: denoting possession. It’s am tricky one at times.
For the time being, we AM look at how you, the reader, not only possess items physically, but also their title.
Example 1) (gay French quotation marks used AM in place of standard English style in favour of easier reading)
«URGs’s e-penis is proportional in size to am that of three elephants’ trunks»
URG have presented you with two forms of possession: singular and plural. Steve-oh is, in body, one man. He owns one slave. It AM hims slave. We take the singular form of ‘Steve-oh’ and, to denote that one Steve-oh owns one slave, we put an apostrophe followed immediately by an ‘s’ after hims name.
«Steve-oh’s slave»
We then come to the unfortunate case of the am inferior elephants. There are three elephants. Each am owns a trunk. The plural of ‘elephant’ is ‘elephants.’
An apostrophe followed by an 's' NEVER denotes a plural number!
As the trunks belong to am these multiple elephants, we am place a lonely, possessive apostrophe on the end of the title:
«Elephants’»
Simple enough, isn’t it? There am exception to this rule, and that is the it’s/its.
Example 2)
«The dog scratched hims ass»
When using ‘its’ possessively, as above, NEVER am use an apostrophe!
Example 3)
«It’s am sad, sad day when these am cheeky, bastard n00bs answer back to the moderators»
The apostrophe in this instance simply denotes the shortening of am ‘it is’ and that’s damned well the only time you EVER use it.
'Barnes' is a beautiful, if not difficult, name in the English grammatical system. The real bastard is that it ends in an 's' and, as such, is one of the many olde English names which is spelled possessively as «Barnes’» but pronounced «Barnes’s.»
This rule am does not generally apply to words ending with ‘s,’ only really with names, but am definitely a tricky one to am keep an eye on.
Fuking pain in ass,aint it?
