![\"odds](\"https:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8565\/15519545913_c176c60b95_q.jpg\")
I could say I’m blogging about odds & ends because it’s\u00a0the lull between festive holiday events, and with parties\u00a0and football soon to come, no one wants to read about anything serious\u00a0(not that there aren’t plenty of serious things to write about).<\/p>\n
But the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, barring surprises, should pretty much be a continuation of the lull for us. No one’s coming over and we’re not going out. Wednesday night, Donna’ll be in bed by 10. If I’m still awake at midnight I might step outside to listen for gunfire. That’s as exciting as it gets around here. Football? Not my thing. Donna can watch\u00a0the New Year’s Day games; I’ll be on the patio smoking sausages and ribs.<\/p>\n
So it’s only right I’m blogging about odds & ends.<\/p>\n
This morning a friend posted a link to an apostrophe usage test<\/a> on Facebook. I don’t usually click on those things, but apostrophes are\u00a0tricky and I decided to take the challenge. The\u00a0test has two levels: “terribly tricky” and “devilishly difficult.” You can take each level\u00a0over and over; you get\u00a0different questions each time. I consistently scored 10 of\u00a010 on the tricky level\u00a0but only managed 7 or 8 of\u00a010 on the devilish level. Click on the image below if you want to try your hand.<\/p>\n That’s a screen grab of a representative question from the “devilishly difficult” level. The correct answer is\u00a0James’s, not James’ as I had thought.<\/p>\n Commenting on my friend’s Facebook post, I said my general rule with regard to apostrophes is “if in doubt, look it up,” and\u00a0that while\u00a0Google is great for apostrophe answers, I still turn to my copy of\u00a0the AP Stylebook\u00a0for really thorny issues of usage. This sparked a comment thread\u00a0on style guides. Strong opinions abound. Apparently some writers hate the AP Stylebook because it’s anti-Oxford comma<\/a>. I’m pro-Oxford comma, and have always politely disagreed with AP on that. What’s the big deal?<\/p>\n When I worked\u00a0for the US Special Operations Command in the 1980s, I learned that\u00a0the most important skill a staff officer can have is the ability to write clearly. Each officer at USSOCOM was issued an AP Stylebook, along with a 9mm Baretta pistol and holster. We kept the pistols in safes when we weren’t using them; the style guides were on our desks and in use around the clock. You were far more likely to have someone waving a style guide at you than a pistol. Which made the more important and lasting contribution to our nation’s military readiness? My money’s on the AP Stylebook.<\/p>\n In spite of Google’s handiness and ease of use, my standard (save for serial commas) is still the AP Stylebook. I bought a new edition a couple of years ago. I found that I prefer the\u00a01984 edition, the one I was given at USSOCOM. The spiral binder is what makes it … when it’s open the pages lay flat and you can type without having to hold the book open with one hand\u00a0(you can probably guess I just had it open to the “lay, lie” entry).<\/p>\n “This is the best of Henry James’s novels.” Really? Can that possibly be right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I could say I’m blogging about odds & ends because it’s\u00a0the lull between festive holiday events, and with parties\u00a0and football soon to come, no one wants to read about anything serious\u00a0(not that there aren’t plenty of serious things to write about). But the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, barring surprises, should pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,827,21],"tags":[1754,1753],"class_list":["post-15914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-social-media","category-words","tag-ap-stylebook","tag-apostrophe-rules"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15914"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15930,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914\/revisions\/15930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7508\/16137373741_0e482aa204.jpg\" "\\"click")
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