shanmonster | Firefly Dance Confusion

I stayed up much too late, last night watching episodes of Firefly with f00dave and Siobhan. I'm amazed the show was cancelled, but unsurprised, considering the incompetency of the tv people who showed it completely out of order. It's the best television show I've ever seen, and I'm looking forward to the movie with increasing excitement.

Sometime during the night, but before I plunked myself down in front of the boob tube, I did an interpretive dance to the theme song from the Planet of the Apes. f00 recorded a couple seconds of it. It was very silly. However, I don't think it was nearly as silly as my "Ass Dance". I'm hoping f00 will post a clip of this on his blog. Siobhan also taught me a bit of African slap dancing.

I looked up African slap dance online, and can't really find any information other than this NSFW bit of boobie dancing (Quote: "She understood also that her great tits will be sore flesh bags when she is done."). This is not the sort of dance I was doing. In any case, I have no idea if this dance actually does originate in Africa. I can find reference to German and Samoan slap dances, but aside from the aforementioned booby dance, nothing on a similar one from Africa.

Regardless of where it comes from, it looks pretty spiffy. Maybe I can get snowy_kathryn or Siobhan to show me the other rhythms, too.

I'm quite surprised I was able to do all this moving about considering how gorged I was on turkey and all the, er, fixin's.

I feel dirty having typed that last word.

I just realized I have no idea how to pluralize an incomplete word. How does one pluralize "fixin'" without making it look like I'm using a grocer's apostrophe? Is it grammatically correct to pluralize a word like this? Should I just leave out the offending apostrophe altogether?

Current Mood: curious

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Fixins'

That implies a plural possessive.

You're arguing grammar about a non-word? That's not just dumb, that's a special kind of dumb. Maybe that's why I love you so much. Hee hee!

Sure it's a word. It's not a formal word, but it's a word nonetheless.

If the word is not formal, then why are you persisting in appying formal rules (grammar) to it? That's like using logic to prove the existence of god: something you just can't do, since "godness" is outside logic. You're being an absurdist.

Just fixins. Trust me on this one.

And boy howdy, do I love Firefly. One of my four must-see American TV shows. (The others, since I know you're dying to ask, are: Babylon 5, Carnivale, and Jeremiah.)

Looking forward to the film, Serenity, supposedly coming out mid-April this year. :D

Okay, so how would you pluralize "ain't"?

You don't have to. It works as a singular and plural verb contraction.

You may now applaud.

Ain't can be pluralized, eg. "How many ain'ts did you count in that document?"

See?

Not as a verb it isn't.

As a noun, in the way you used it, simply add an "s." English is good like that. :D

English isn't always so very good that way. If it were, than the plural of ox, child, and brother would be oxs, childs, and brothers (ok, so the last one works, except when it's brethren instead). English is full of all sorts of chewy contradictions, and that is one of the reasons I am so attracted to it.

Now, grammatically speaking, I still believe the plural to fixin', meetin', or any other such truncated word, includes the apostrophe in addition to the S. This is cludgy, though, so the best fix I can think of is write in such a manner that such awkward constructions can be left out altogether.

*Feh*. English has *never* been so good that way. But those are just leftovers from the way English grew up. The thing is, though, with ye olde English moderne, simplicity is king. If it works with adding an "s," we add an "s." Thus, fixins. If people were worried at all about grammar and other scholastic leanings, they would use the word "fixings" rather than "fixins" unless they were quoting somebody or writing dialogue. But the apostrophe, being the specific grammatical marker it is, only confuses the issue when you see it written as "fixin's"--belonging to fixin, yes?
The apostrophe is used for possessives and to denote missing letters, but *never* to indicate plurals, though it can indicate possession by a plural noun. But since spoken English couldn't care less about written English, you end up with troublesome dialectical issues like "fixin." However, when written, it has no choice to be other than "fixins" for the aforementioned reasons. It's the same way when writing shorthand for initials and acronyms. You can imply possessive, such as "that box is the FBI's," but if your wondering how many PoDs the postal service does, it's just that, not "PoD's".

Ah, the lovely messiness of a living language.

If it works with adding an "s," we add an "s."

As we appear to be turning this into a fully fledged quibble-fest, then I'd point out that the comma in that sentence should follow the quotation marks.

The apostrophe is used for possessives and to denote missing letters, but *never* to indicate plurals...

No. No, no, no, no, no. And no.

There's an established convention, alternative to the one I suggested (http://www.livejournal.com/users/shanmonster/226427.html?thread=1305211#t1305211) to this LJ's owner, which allows one to pluralise using apostrophes when one is talking about terms rather than using them as part of the sentence's language; for instance: "The do's and don't's of punctuation."

It's not a tradition that I personally subscribe to, mind. I'd rather avoid apostrophes where possible, especially when pluralising acronyms.

The comma should follow the quotation marks? Really?

Maybe the rules have changed. When I was in high school, commas went inside quotation marks.

I didn't like that rule, and do hope it has indeed changed.

Can you show me in a reliable grammar text where apostrophes are considered acceptable as pluralization (eg. "do's and don't's"). I am dubious about the matter.

The comma should follow the quotation marks? Really?

I believe this is one of the cases where N American and British approaches differ. The Oxford University Press's policy (and that of many other British publishing houses) is for commas or full stops to remain outside quotation marks unless they're part of the quoted material.

However, I know damn well that some UK publishers insist on commas inside quotes when breaking up a sentence of speech, as in the following example: "I love pie," said Weebl, "because it tastes good."

I found this article (http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipmay96.htm), which contrasts UK, USA & Canadian approaches. It kindly describes the UK approach as logical.

Can you show me in a reliable grammar text where apostrophes are considered acceptable as pluralization (eg. "do's and don't's"). I am dubious about the matter.

I know Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592400876/002-2401596-3652017?v=glance) cites it as an acceptable way to pluralise verbs used as nouns (as opposed to verbal nouns).

However, the more time I spend looking into this, the more evidence of divergent practices I find, even within the UK. Basically, if you're writing for a publication, then your editor will determine acceptable practice. However, an article at UKJournalism.org (http://www.ukjournalism.org/default.asp?nc=6897&id=271) has this to say:

"Probably the only legitimate reason for using an apostrophe to form a plural is in dealing with lower-case letters, as in mind your p's and q's or in referring to do's and don'ts. These are not phrases that occur very often in news writing and the general rule is that an apostrophe must show either possession or omission."

I'll see if I can find something better next time I'm in the library (probably tomorrow), but I can't help wondering what happens if I find two such texts which give different guidance.

Mathematicians will often use the aprostrophe when forced to pluralize symbols (they try to rework the sentance not to, but sometimes it's quite unavoidable), e.g. "the sum of the unprocessed $\pi_i$'s", where the part in the dollar signs means the greek letter pi with an i subscript. It may look odd, but it's the same argument as "mind your p's and q's"....

The practice isn't restricted to mathematicians (or other similarly afflicted souls), as I mentioned here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/shanmonster/226427.html?thread=1305211#t1305211), though the uninitiated tend not to bother with the LateΧ.

Since we're quibbling anyway; it's "LaTeX". :-)

Ah, but you're using "X" instead of capital chi. : P

And, y'know, that icon of yours is really quite disturbing.

The documentation specifically asserts that in a text-only medium (presumably ASCII), the correct form is "LaTeX". Of course, this is HTML, but you typed "LateX", not me. ;-)

And yes, it is. I did it specifically to scare you. Here it is again.

HTML offers &_Chi_; as an option; an option which I chose. There are no excuses.

And scary, yes, but not quite as terrifying as this mullet (http://www.shanmonster.com/gallery/formal1.html). You could lose a small child in there.

Yes, but in that case, the fact that you're speaking about the term, tacitly using meta-English, would mean you'd put the "ain't"s in quotes -- exactly as I've done there.

NB: Some people prefer to use single quotes for this purpose; moreover, there is a case for not quoting individual symbols, and just using an apostrophe to pluralise -- eg. "There were two f's the first clause of this sentence."

Is it grammatically correct to put the pluralizing S on the outside of quotation marks?

I need to find my grammar texts. I haven't cracked open my Harbrace or Strunk in too long.

It's correct according to the convention I was taught, yes. But I'm not sure that grammar prescribes what we're doing here -- many issues of punctuation are dictated by usage, and usage changes over time and varies between nations*.

In the relevant sentence in my post above, if I'd instead written

"you'd put the "ain'ts" in quotes",

then I'd mean that the single instance of "ain'ts" -- the whole term including the "s" -- would be put in quotes. According to my original sentence, there was more than one instance of "ain't", which is pluralised by having the "s" outside the quotes.

* I should point out I'm from the UK. I'm aware that the US follows slightly different conventions on matters of punctuation, and confess to be unsure as to which traditions influence Canadian English the most.

I believe Canadian English tends more toward the British than it does the American conventions.

As an addendum before I head home, I popped into Waterstones to check a copy of Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. It offers no guidelines whatsoever.

In the end, I guess it's a matter of sticking to your preferred convention, and writing in a manner that disambiguates. Sorry I couldn't provide anything more authoritative than that.

hey, hope you don't mind if i 'friend' you. ive been reading your journal ever since i saw it listed on neil gaiman's journal and when i found out you were from fredricton (im from saint john) i flipped. someone from nb spoke with neil! ahh! (this gives me a thrill, yes i suck)
anyhoo, toodles.

Don't mind at all. Hi!

I just realized I have no idea how to pluralize an incomplete word.

"Fixins". "Fixin's" would imply the contracted form of "fixin is" or possession, as in "the fixin's ingredients".

I realize the apostrophe makes it look like a possessive. But where an apostrophe marks a missing letter at the end of a word, is there a correct manner of pluralization which retains the apostrophe?

I believe traditionalists would prefer "fixin's" to "fixins". I'd point out that modern usage tends towards the latter, dropping the apostrophe unless it introduces extra ambiguity. (Which means I should've been less definite in my original comment.)

As I said elsewhere, I guess it's a matter of sticking to your preferred convention, and writing in a manner that disambiguates.

Oh, how I love seeing another person on my friends list become enthralled by the throes of Firefly. In this case, without my telling them to, even! ;)

I got the DVDs as a Christmas gift two years ago, and I like to watch them from time to time. They're awesome.

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