Mail enhancement
It’s always best to start the new year with a clean in-box, free of unanswered grammar questions.
What’s the possessive for singular words that end in S? For instance, is it “dress’” or “dress’s”? A friend’s blog refers to his boyfriend as “Initials.” Is the possessive “Initials’” or “Initials’s”?
The rules are way more complicated than they need to be ... and guess what?
Nobody actually knows what they are anyway. So you can’t ever be wrong.
Never put an S after the apostrophe. As long as you’re consistent about that, no one will ever call you out on it.
But more important, never be friends with someone who refers to their boyfriend as “Initials” on their blog. That’s super annoying.
Three rules seem to be gone: 1) “different from” vs. “different than”; 2) “shall” vs. “will”; 3) “if I were” vs. “if I was.” Were they important?
In the grand scheme? Probably not.
What about “uninterested” vs. “disinterested”?
Grammar snobs love to try to trip others up on this one, but the snobs are the misinformed ones.
When both words first appeared in the 17th century, “uninterested” meant “unbiased,” whereas “disinterested” primarily meant “not interested”—the reverse of what we think today. A century or so later they swapped roles, but then in the 20th century the original definition of “disinterested” came back into fashion as well. Ever since, grammarians have decried the use of “disinterested” to mean “not interested,” not realizing “disinterested”’s checkered past.
Next time someone corrects you, tell them to check their history book (or, you know, the dictionary).
“Obliged” and “obligated”: What’s the difference?
According to Merriam-Webster’s, “obligate” means “to bind legally or morally,” while “oblige” means “to constrain by physical, moral or legal force, or by the exigencies of circumstance.” Go with “obligated,” unless you wanna rough somebody up, or you feel like using fun words like “exigencies.”
Which is correct—“Lawyers that get results” or “Lawyers who get results”?
“Who” (along with, as an object, “whom”) is used when you’re talking about people; “that” is used for things.
So are lawyers people? You make the call!
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