Sunday Funnies: LOL, April 6, 2014

Cidu Bill on Apr 6th 2014

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Filed in Bill Bickel, Comics That Made Us Laugh Out Loud, Dave Coverly, Mark Parisi, Off the Mark, Speed Bump, comic strips, comics, humor, lol | 24 responses so far

24 Responses to “Sunday Funnies: LOL, April 6, 2014”

  1. mdt48302 Apr 6th 2014 at 05:53 pm 1

    Of course, it should be Sisyphus’s. And that’s important, because pronouncing Sisyphus’s is funnier than the comic.

  2. Cidu Bill Apr 6th 2014 at 06:52 pm 2

    I’m glad I’m not the only person who hates seeing possessives written incorrectly.

  3. James Pollock Apr 6th 2014 at 07:21 pm 3

    Huh? Sisyphus’ is correct.
    Nouns that end is “S” (including most plural nouns) just get an apostrophe added to show possessiveness, unless the final S is unvoiced.

  4. Arthur Apr 6th 2014 at 08:21 pm 4

    It depends which style manual you use.
    If people start debating the Oxford comma, I’m outta here.

  5. JHGRedekop Apr 6th 2014 at 08:22 pm 5

    Under Oxford and APA rules, proper names ending in a voiced S get ‘S: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2013/06/forming-possessives-with-singular-names.html

  6. lihtox Apr 6th 2014 at 08:38 pm 6

    So that’s what Sisyphus was punished for!

  7. furrykef Apr 6th 2014 at 08:56 pm 7

    Most people who talk about what sort of English is “correct” can’t name who gets to decide what is and isn’t correct. Aside from “my English teacher”, anyway.

  8. mitch4 Apr 6th 2014 at 09:15 pm 8

    Do you’all really mean “unvoiced”? Or is that really just “silent”?

    My reason for asking is that in phonology “voiced” and “unvoiced” are a different distinction — the /s/ sound is unvoiced and the /z/ sound is voiced. (Many other pairs too, of course.)

  9. Mark in Boston Apr 6th 2014 at 09:41 pm 9

    Dogs like being Sisyphus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNvjtyUh2OM

  10. James Pollock Apr 7th 2014 at 12:01 am 10

    “Do you’all really mean “unvoiced”? Or is that really just “silent”?”

    I don’t know what I mean. I remain convinced that whatever I meant is 100% right, but what I meant is subject to change with passing whimsy.

    “Under Oxford and APA rules”
    I didn’t go to Oxford, and I’m not a psychologist, so these rules don’t apply to me.

  11. DemetriosX Apr 7th 2014 at 06:40 am 11

    Academically speaking, Sisyphus’ is correct. While you write “Wells’s dog”, classical or ancient names that end in “s” are given the possessive strictly through an apostrophe. Hence Sisyphus’ rather than Sisyphus’s.

  12. Willondon Apr 7th 2014 at 07:27 am 12

    Some unvoiced/voiced pairs are k/g, p/b, f/v, t/d, s/z. If you pronounce the first of the pair, then the second, as in “k-k-k-k g-g-g-g”, you’ll hear that the second of the pair is produced in the same way as the first, except that instead of just passing air through your mouth, you’re also activating the vocal chords.

  13. Elyrest Apr 7th 2014 at 11:45 am 13

    “I don’t know what I mean. I remain convinced that whatever I meant is 100% right, but what I meant is subject to change with passing whimsy.”

    James Pollock - That makes perfect sense to me. What I say may be what I meant, but then again, maybe not. Or I might’ve meant it when I said it, but circumstances have changed. I’ve never been a B&W person, as life is too full of indeterminates, and as I age I see more variations of gray than I ever thought possible. My only absolutes are to treat myself and others with care - that covers a lot though.

  14. James Pollock Apr 7th 2014 at 02:30 pm 14

    “My opinion may have changed, but not the fact that I am right”

  15. Cidu Bill Apr 7th 2014 at 03:21 pm 15

    DemetriosX, why would the age of the name determine how the rules of grammar are applied?

  16. DemetriosX Apr 7th 2014 at 03:53 pm 16

    @15 Cidu Bill
    Beats the hell out of me, but that’s what the style guide I had to work with said when I was translating for the New Pauly. Sisyphus’, Socrates’, Cassius’, but Erasmus’s. Maybe something to do with the fact that virtually all Roman and most Greek names end in S?

  17. Cidu Bill Apr 7th 2014 at 04:57 pm 17

    Well, I’m fairly sure Coverly did this because he doesn’t know how to make a possessive out of a name ending with an s, and not because he does know, and he also knew that your style guide lists an obscure exception.

    There also seems to be some disagreement here: the American Heritage Dictionary, for one, uses Sophocles’s.

    Personally, I’ll stick with the advice given to me decades ago: don’t do anything that will look wrong to a copyeditor; because once you wake him up, there’s no telling what he might do (the advice was given after I’d written “judgement”)

  18. Mary in Ohio Apr 7th 2014 at 05:41 pm 18

    Strunk & White.

  19. DemetriosX Apr 7th 2014 at 06:03 pm 19

    OK, Strunk & White split the difference. Their very first rule is on possessives and they say: “Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus’, and [some poetic stuff].” They also suggest writing around it, i.e. the laws of Moses.

    That said, I agree that the cartoonist here did it because he would have done exactly the same thing with Charles’s dog. I’d be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to somebody like Zach Weiner, but not really in this instance.

  20. Cidu Bill Apr 7th 2014 at 06:15 pm 20

    I agree with Misters Strunk and White: when something that’s right looks wrong, or when the sentence structure in any way distracts from the content, it gets reworded.

    And my long-standing rule in fiction-writing is to never give a character a name ending in s.

  21. James Pollock Apr 7th 2014 at 06:22 pm 21

    “Judgment” got me in a spelling bee once.

    What, exactly, is wrong with people whose name ends with “S”? It worked out for Johns Hopkins.

  22. Cidu Bill Apr 7th 2014 at 08:49 pm 22

    The making-possessives-out-of-their-names issue, James. They’re fine as long as I don’t let them own anything.

  23. Boise Ed Apr 8th 2014 at 02:22 am 23

    James [21]: Nothing wrong, really, but avoiding the terminal “s” avoids the whole “’s” hassle.

  24. Mark in Boston Apr 8th 2014 at 09:42 pm 24

    Or you can just say “The dog of Sisyphus”.

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