Usually use a comma before a conjunction, except before the following, which should be preceeded by a colon

Is how Id right that.

“beej – Member

One panino.
Two panini. “

Is it not

One Paninus
Two Panini?

😉

@Dez 🙂 true

Is it not

One Paninus
Two Panini?

But it’s Italian, not Latin.

Besides, no one wants to eat something that sounds suspiciously like a cross between penis and anus!

The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.

It should be easy to see.

the following which should be preceeded by a colon:

however
therefore
meanwhile
also
consequently
nevertheless Ooh no, that’ll never do; I don’t like that at all (no full stops or pudding for flashy)

I’m still waiting for the OP to clarify which of the apostrophe’s possessions we’re discussing.

Slight digression. I’ve just been in a meeting where someone said “brought” instead of “bought”.
I thought that was just a forum numpty thing, not something that people actually said out loud.

Unfortunately I often do this if I don’t double check myself, I blame growing up in Norfolk.
My English and grammer isn’t brilliant but apostrophes aren’t that hard, and it gets my goat how bad spelling and grammar is on social media.

I’d like to run some drops, and move to road hydro’s for braking. I’m not wanting to start having 11 speed anything and would like to continue using MTB 10 speed gear. So, mechs, casettes, chains etc:

All road full hydros….

Abbreviation or not, ARGH!

hydrau’s FTW

Grammar. It’s grammar.

I get a little bit bothered by accronyms that are followed by ‘s. It seems that on ocassion people who seemingly know how to use apostrophes decide that an accronym needs one.

I used to work for a company that were involved in Energy Performance Certificates, the amount of time I saw EPC’s written was silly.

Good work with the Bob the Angry Flower cartoon, Willard! I grabbed a link to it when I started reading the thread but then I discovered that you’d beaten me to it. 🙂

I don’t consider myself to be particularly good with grammar or punctuation but once a rule does get lodged into my head I become really aware when I see it broken. Someone explained when to use less and when to use fewer to me a few years ago and it’s like a painful itch when I read “10 items or less” or similar phrases.

I’s therefore I’m. – I is theerefore I am, i‘n‘nit.

FIFY

@Hammerite – I’d disagree. If the purpose of language is to communicate and the purpose of punctuation is to increase clarity and decrease potential for confusion then there’s a great reason for an apostrophe ‘s’ following an acronym. Besides which, acronyms themselves used to need to be pronounciable (<< should be a word) such as NATO.

@ChrisL

That’s why I go to Waitrose

I get a little bit bothered by accronyms that are followed by ‘s

I pointed this out to my boss who argued so I googled and proved it; he still uses his apostrophe.

Many people also use them when talking about decades – The 80’s?!

Yeah but “80’s music” say could refer to music of the 1980s…

Whatever, it’s all shite (apostrophes, not 80s music which was just mainly shite). If they were banned tomorrow, would anyone seriously start misunderstanding stuff? Other than a few grammar numpties doing it deliberately?

…hang on there’s one. Full stop inside or outside brackets? I’m sure that inside is right (think how wrong it would look to put a question mark outside?) But most people put them outside, so I’ve started to do the same. He said, parenthetically.

Well let’s start with that question mark being totally unnecessary, because I can’t see what the question is. I presume you meant something like:

I’m sure that inside is right (wouldn’t the question mark look wrong outside?)

However what about this one, where the question is outside the parentheses:

Is inside right (I think it’s wrong to put a question mark outside)?

Fundamentally, almost all the time it’s correct to put the full stop outside, as otherwise you haven’t terminated the sentence outside properly (inside would only be required if you were terminating the inside sentence and not the outside one, which would be odd).

Well let’s start with that question mark being totally unnecessary,

I could be speaking in an annoying Aussie uptalk/valley girl manner? (Spoilt slightly by Yorkshire accent.)

Fundamentally, almost all the time it’s correct to put the full stop outside, as otherwise you haven’t terminated the sentence outside properly (inside would only be required if you were terminating the inside sentence and not the outside one, which would be odd).

I disagree, and so does the Economist: http://www.economist.com/style-guide/brackets

er, that link you gave doesn’t appear to disagree with me – it’s rare to see a whole sentence within brackets, and none of the examples given has one of those. I agree with what that style guide says for the rare occasions where it would be relevant – in such cases putting the full stop outside would be odd.

So the Economist style guide says: if a whole sentence is within brackets, put the full stop inside. How rare is this? Let’s search for an example. How about, for the sake of convenience, upwards one post? 🙂

I must applaud CFH.

In a classic case of “he went thattaway”, everyone’s been getting their knickers in a twist over apostrophes while the real grammar crime was secretly included in the first line of his OP:

different to

How’s that for pedantry, you anti-pedant pedants?!

I’d put it in or out depending on whether it’s a self-contained sentence or an aside in another one. Eg, I’d consider –

Fundamentally, almost all the time it’s correct to put the full stop outside, as otherwise you haven’t terminated the sentence outside properly (inside would only be required if you were terminating the inside sentence and not the outside one, which would be odd).

I could be speaking in an annoying Aussie uptalk/valley girl manner? (Spoilt slightly by Yorkshire accent.)

– both to be correct. Whether that’s actually right or not I don’t know, but it feels right.

Nowt like a good ‘strophe (rhymes with ‘loaf’) debate… (@Cougar – both are right. It’s tricky trying to mix it with the grammar pedants as your never more than one slip from oblivion.)

Well of all the uses of brackets in this thread it’s the only one, so I reckon that makes it rare (and I’m going to add in this one here to improve the percentages).

@johnx2 – please tell me that you’re playing with us and that your slip was deliberate

😉 …and I managed to do another in brackets full stop, so their! (Christ this hurts to do.)

You want a fight do you (don’t worry, I’ll get bored soon)?

shirley the contents of the brackets and the sentence are separate entities and need punctuating on their own.

So a sentence would have a beginning (at the start, a good place for it.), a middle (here!), and an end (where-else?).

So if the content of the brackets need punctuation use it, if not don’t bother. I’d consider the full stop in the first brackets to be superfluous but the ! and ? fair use and then a proper full stop finishing the original sentence.

Ah, well that I’d consider superfluous as well (because the punctuation in the brackets also covers that!)

So a sentence would have a beginning (at the start, a good place for it.), a middle (here!), and an end (where-else?).

You don’t hyphenate where else!
I mean, really! 🙄
Pshaw.

But if there is the need for punctuation within the brackets, surely to God, there’d be capitalisation as well.

Local petrol station has a sign saying “Shop ‘n Drive”.

An apostrophe short surely?

Oh and why is apostrophe such a long word? Shouldn’t it be abbreviated?

your not wrong

An apostrophe short surely?

Is that supposed to be a question. 😡