Sellout Spelling
I saw a poster for an Ashton Kutcher flick. Ashton was depicted in the foreground, looking shocked and perhaps apprehensive. A pair of slim, feminine hands, having come over his shoulders from behind, were fastening his tie. The hands belonged to a pretty standard Hot Chick, visible behind his right shoulder. I’ve seen her in something but I forget her name. Behind his other shoulder, lips pursed, an Old Man.
The name of the movie:
My Boss’sDaughter
This is an interesting way of dealing with the ever-confusing problem: “How does one form the possessive of a word that ends in s?” This has been dealt with in many ways. Some folks (elegantly and correctly) would say “My Boss’ Daughter”. Others would go for the logically unassailable but slightly unsightly “My Boss’s Daughter”. Back in the day they would have said “My Boss His Daughter”, or even (I believe) “The Governess His Daughter”.
But those pusillanimous movie wimps (O Hollywood! thy moral cowardice giveth me a puke) have wimped out entirely. They are not man enough to spell it either as Boss’ or Boss’s, but have to try to have it both ways. Typical. They are abdicating their responsibility to the youth, and to the future.
…
Now let’s mock some other wacky ways people’ve spelt this movie’s title!
- My Bosses Daughter (Nice try, Chaucer!)
- My Bosses’s Daughter (Nice try, Fritz!)
- My Bosses’ Daughter (Maybe if you have a very specific work situation…)
- My Boss Daughter (Yeah, she’s totally mint)
…
Late Breaking Update!
For all y’all visual types. Is she really fastening his tie?
January 26th, 2004 at 11:24 am
Someone too lazy to use my comment technology thinks I should point out that the Hot Chick is Tara Reid, who played Bunny Lebowski.
January 26th, 2004 at 11:43 am
Boss’s is neither incorrect, inelegant, not unsightly. Eliding the terminal s in the possessive form of words ending with s is an infantile disorder. As Strunk writes in Elements of Style: “Form the possessive singular of nouns with ’s. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant.”
Strunk does make exceptions for ancient proper names and some special forms (of which the progency of the foreman is not one). He, like my own self, expresses some discomfort about these and advises substitution of the long form (ie, temple of Isis for Isis’ temple).
Certainly we agree that trying to have it both ways by making the terminal s quarter-size is unacceptable.
January 27th, 2004 at 11:57 am
I thought that it was all about Our Lord and Savior. Like, anything ending in [i]s[/i] got [i]’s[/i] except for [i]Jesus[/i]. Here are some examples:
*Can you believe that horrible man stole Tess’s girlhood?
*Gee, I sure do love Ross’s wacky and lovable know-it-all attitude. He’s a character on my favorite show — “Friends,” of course!
*Did you see that totally realistic imprint of Jesus’ face on the Shroud of Worcester?
Hmmm. Inelegant, perhaps. And it really looks like Jesus is left hanging. Alls I know is, I hope that my italics work, since I can’t break into the comments section of this blog and fix any errors I might cause by trying to be fancy.
January 27th, 2004 at 12:57 pm
Sorry Erin, shoulda used the pointy, not the square, braces. Also, “em” is preferable to “i” since it reinforces the conceptual separation between content and presentation.
January 28th, 2004 at 10:28 am
Everybody that posts on this weblog is a programmer, except for me. May I just say you are all not cool .
January 28th, 2004 at 11:21 am
That can’t possibly be true, Erin. The blogosphere is democracy brought to life, set fire! People from all walks of life are involved — and tho the practice has yet to attain its eventual universality, the idea that you would be the only non-programmer who posts here is frankly laughable.
We’ve got grad students here! Librarians! Some Greek-knowing mutha! This is indeed a big tent.
January 28th, 2004 at 12:17 pm
I should also like to point out that the proper use of HTML cannot possibly be a knowledge domain only accessible to programmers, as HTML is not a programming language (it is not Turing-complete). If Erin meant to say that everyone except her knows the proper markup conventions, well, certainly that was obvious from her first post. I am not sure why showing a lack of ignorance in this sphere would be considered “uncool.”
Also, happy birthday to Erin!
January 28th, 2004 at 1:54 pm
Yes, happy birthday to Erin!
February 6th, 2004 at 1:51 pm
Holy poo! Erin’s birthday was 1/28? That’s Erica’s birthday! *fanfare*
February 7th, 2004 at 9:22 am
Happy birthday, Erica!