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Subject:hideous grammar From:"Timothy J. Auth" <tjauth -at- RS6000 -dot- CMP -dot- ILSTU -dot- EDU> Date:Wed, 2 Aug 1995 09:49:15 -0500
This from Nancy:
What's the plural of "Charles" as in the sentence, "I went to a party last
night and there were seven Charless (or Charleses or Charles's) there"?
The first isn't "correct" and it doesn't look right. The second is
"correct" but it doesn't look right, either. The third isn't "correct"
but it's close to correct and it looks subjectively better to some people
than the second. What's the problem? Are some of us so stuck on "rules"
that we can't change our minds? Are we so mentally decrepit that we
cannot learn new ideas?
Since when does a word appearing appearing ``right`` have anything to do with
whether or not is spelled correctly or whether proper grammar is being used? I
suppose something which looks as ugly as ``Charless`` or ``Charleses`` could be
distracting in actually reading the text. The third option looks subjectively
better, but it would be interesting to hear why that would be important.
Appearance and functionality haven`t seem to have had much importance in the
English language_if it did wouldn`t we spell ``knife`` as ``nife`` instead.
