FAO: Robert Sterling

+lawstudent+

In your signature, you state:

"We learn by our mistakes. Happy is the person who learns by other peoples mistakes"

In that case, I've just learnt from you that you should have an apostrophe after "peoples".

ie.

"We learn by our mistakes. Happy is the person who learns by other peoples' mistakes"

Maybe you could learn from your mistake here?

Guy_Montag

surely it should be "people's mistakes"

i.e. the mistakes of the people, not the mistakes of the peoples

pboae

Guy_Montag wrote:

surely it should be "people's mistakes"

i.e. the mistakes of the people, not the mistakes of the peoples

I think you are right Guy, peoples' does not make sense.

sarahlouise210

but an apostrophe is used in place of another letter ..such as people`s really means people is ...I think peoples` is the correct use of the apostrophe in this case...though would not have pointed it out!

Bossyboots

+lawstudent+ wrote:

In your signature, you state:

"We learn by our mistakes. Happy is the person who learns by other peoples mistakes"

In that case, I've just learnt from you that you should have an apostrophe after "peoples".

ie.

"We learn by our mistakes. Happy is the person who learns by other peoples' mistakes"

Maybe you could learn from your mistake here?

What a completely pointless and childish thread.

If you are truly a law student you seem to have a lot to learn about humility and somewhere out there is a legal secretary who is going to take great delight in teaching it to you. If you go into a law firm with this sort of attitude, the staff are going to wipe the floor with you.

Bossyboots

sarahlouise210 wrote:

but an apostrophe is used in place of another letter ..such as people`s really means people is ...I think peoples` is the correct use of the apostrophe in this case...though would not have pointed it out!

I agree with Guy_Montag. Another similar word is children, where you would say the children's toys, not the childrens' toys.

Nenen

I couldn't agree more with Bossyboots! :beer:
Correcting other adults' grammar/spelling mistakes is rude and childish. The whole point of language is to communicate and, as long as the meaning is clear enough for the intended purpose, it is extremely arrogant to point out mistakes unless you have been invited to do so. If mistakes in grammar or spelling make the meaning unclear then, by all means, ask (politely) for clarification but you really don't need to give unasked for 'advice' in this situation. I find it particularly funny that in this instance you are wrong yourself! Pride goes before a fall!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

sarahlouise210 wrote:

but an apostrophe is used in place of another letter ..such as people`s really means people is ...I think peoples` is the correct use of the apostrophe in this case...though would not have pointed it out!

In case anyone is interested, I think (hope) I'm right in saying that an apostrophe may be used in two completely different set of circumstances:

1) As sarahlouise says, in place of a letter, usually in contractions, e.g. do not becoming don't;

2) To indicate possession e.g. 'the ball of the boy' becomes 'the boy's ball. In this instance one boy owns the ball. However, 'the ball of the boys' (i.e. more than one boy owns the ball) becomes 'the boys' ball'. The apostrophe comes before the 's' if the person/thing doing the 'owning' is singular but after the 's' if there is more than one owner. In the case of collective nouns (you usually add something other than 's' to make the plural) for example, as Bossyboots has already pointed out, the plural of child doesn't become childs it becomes children or or the plural of person is not persons it's people, then the apostrophe comes before the 's'.

Hence 'mistakes of the people' becomes 'people's mistakes'.

Phew! HTH :beer:

rosysparkle

It should be "people's mistakes", so lawstudent has got his/her correction wrong. Maye they will learn from that mistake.

But why, I wonder, has lawstudent chosen to do a thread instead of a private message? The only reason I can think of is to show themselves as more clever than others, and as we see, unfortunately that has backfired since they themselves are wrong.

rosysparkle

double post - is there a glitch?

rosysparkle

triple post

rosysparkle

quadruple post - oh dear