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Subject:Creative Punctuation From:David Chisma <chisma -at- C031 -dot- AONE -dot- NET -dot- AU> Date:Sun, 23 Nov 1997 07:58:41 +1100
As reported in the Kamloops Daily New, Friday, November 21, 1997
Veteran sticks to his guns on use of extra apostrophes
A veterans' memorial committee member is
defending two orphan
apostrophes on a Riverside Park cairn as creative
use of the
language.
"We're not going to change anything," Kamloops
Naval Veterans
Association president Bill Doggart said Thursday.
"I don't think it
needs to be changed."
The grappling over grammar comes after unveiling
of the memorial
plaque this month. In part, it reads "veterans
gave up their
tomorrow's so we may have our today's."
The apostrophes are in error.
The cost of chiseling out the plaque and fixing
the phrase is
estimated at $900. The memorial society, composed
of volunteers
from various city veterans' organizations, raised
$5,000 for the
cairn and had it constructed in time for
Remembrance Day. There
is no money to fix the plaque.
"They're in the possessive form. The possessive
is the veteran's
'tomorrow's' and our 'today's'," Doggart said.
"That's what we
intended."
Living proof that literacy is *not* declining.
Dave Chisma
chisma -at- c031 -dot- aone -dot- net -dot- au
