Apostrophes have always been confusing. 'First' or 'firstly'? Trudy!

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1009. If you think apostrophes are confusing today, wait until you hear how people used them 100s of years ago! Ammon Shea has some wild stories. Plus, should you use "first," "second," and "third" or "firstly," "secondly," and "thirdly"?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Grammar girl here I'm in y'on foggarty your friendly guide to the English
0:09.2	language we talk about writing history, and other cool stuff.
0:13.6	I am still getting people asking me questions about how to make names that end with S-possessive,
0:19.7	even though I did a show about it three weeks ago,
0:22.2	included it in my newsletter and posted about it on
0:25.3	social media.
0:26.7	So if you missed that, check out episode one thousand six.
0:30.6	But I'm also hearing people lament that some mysterious they people have made
0:36.2	apostrophes too complicated, which reminded me of a short interview I did way
0:41.2	back in 2014 with Amman Shay that had the title
0:45.8	Apostrophes were always confusing. I was gonna just post it on social but
0:51.0	when I listened to it I enjoyed it so much that I wanted you to hear it too.
0:56.6	So that'll be first and then after that I'll have a segment about whether you should use first
1:01.3	or firstly.
1:06.0	Next I have an interview with Amman Shay,
1:08.1	the author of one of my favorite new books, Bad English.
1:11.8	Hi, Aeman, thanks for joining me.
1:13.6	Thank you for having me.
1:14.9	Really, I just adored your book.
1:16.8	And in particular, I want to talk about the chapter
1:20.4	about apostrophes.
1:22.1	A source of never-ending trouble.
	...

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