The title, Kamala Harris, raises a query mark on the usage of the controversial apostrophe
Kamala Harris’ presidential marketing campaign goes effectively. Right? Wrong. Kamala Harris’s presidential marketing campaign goes effectively. Right? Wrong once more.
Does that imply that the presidential marketing campaign of Kamala Harris is just not going effectively? In reality, her marketing campaign goes so effectively that it’s thrown Donald and his supporters right into a MAGAmaniacal tizz.
The downside with the primary two statements made on this column is just not political however grammatical, and entails the usage of the punctuation mark known as the apostrophe.
The apostrophe, which resembles a typical or backyard comma that has taken an escalator to raise itself from the underside of a phrase to the highest, has two capabilities. One is to indicate an omission in phrases like can’t for can not. The different use, which has revived a long-standing linguistic dispute, is the apostrophe as an indication of possession or possession.
So, ought it to be Kamala Harris’ marketing campaign, with the apostrophe coming after the s, or ought it to be Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign, with a second s following the apostrophe? The downside with the possessive apostrophe arises solely with names ending with the letter s, like Harris. The possessive apostrophe has no downside with Trump’s title, or JD Vance’s. And if Kamala Harris does win, she’ll be solely the fourth US president with an s-ending title, after Rutherford B Hayes, who was elected in 1876.
Some grammarians insist it ought to be ‘Jesus’ teachings’, whereas others argue that it ought to be ‘Jesus’s teachings’, as a result of the written or printed phrase should mirror the way in which we communicate, and the way in which we communicate is just not Jesus teachings, however Jesuses teachings.
Not a couple of may ponder whether the commentary on who’ll assume the workplace of probably the most highly effective human on the planet shouldn’t concern itself with points like local weather change, and Gaza, and Ukraine, and the worldwide economic system, as a substitute of linguistic esoterica just like the apostrophe.
But the digression into grammatic trivia may be seen as a welcome break from the vituperative diatribe to which the presidential contest has degenerated. Better than “a Kammunist Kamala” or a “Donald Dump” is an exasperating apestrophe.
Disclaimer
This article is meant to deliver a smile to your face. Any connection to occasions and characters in actual life is coincidental.
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