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>>My editor wants me to remove every apostrophe from my manual. This means
>>replacing not only all contractions (something I could deal with) but also
>>recasting any sentence that uses an apostrophe to form the possessive.
>Please send us your editor's (sorry, editors) email address - I'd (...erm,
>I would) like to shout at him for several hours, and perhaps hit him a bit
>as well.
I've been reading and writing technical material for a very long time.
While I have seen several guidelines forbidding contractions (especially
for material which will be translated into non-european languages) I have
never, EVER, seen a wholesale prohibition of apostrophes.
It just doesn't make sense, unless you are dealing with braindead
typesetting equipment that doesn't HAVE apostrophes. The work-arounds to
eliminate possessives, for example, will add an obscene amount of time to
the production cycle of a standard-length manual. The language will become
convoluted and muddy, and the page count will mushroom, increasing paper
and binding costs. The whole thing will be less readable, less
usable---and your hot-line/support staff will get many more irate calls
from folks who get lost in the "the glangthing belonging to the framus"
jungle.
Hiss,
scratch,
bite,
chew, and
spit your editor into a deep pit.
May him/her/it be reincarnated as a hair-ball.
<gee, that was fun!>
@Kat ___________________________________ katnagel -at- eznet -dot- net
Kat Nagel, MasterWork Consulting Services, Rochester, NY
Technical writing / Editing / Document design
"She has very definite opinions on grammar, but enjoys
debating them with me before insisting on doing it her
way, rather like a cat toying with a mouse."
______T. Mauro, COPYEDITING-L (7/16/96)
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