Pedants' Paradise

[Pabmusic]

... with English names the usual rule is -'s "whenever possible, ie in all monosyllables and disyllables, and in longer words accented on the penult" -

Charles's Cousins's Gustavus's Hicks's St James's Jones's Thomas's Zacharias's

in longer names not accented on the penult -'s is also preferable, tho' -' is also admissible - eg Nicholas'

Euphony may decide the addition or omission of 's. It is often omitted when the last syllable of the name is pronounced -iz, as in Bridges', Moses'.

There are as always exceptions. The hospital seems to prefer to be St Thomas'

An excellent exposition. Pronunciation is particularly important here, since s's is clearly ziz but s' is not.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There is a view that apostrophes should be completely abandoned. The occasions when possessives or omitted letters get confused with simple plurals are so rare as to be negligible. In the phrase "Johns coat" we know perfectly well we are talking about the coat belonging to John. "Its a fine day" unambiguously means that the day is fine. So although in practice I'm [Im?] a paid-up member of the apostrophe police, if it became acceptable not to use them at all, I'd [Id?] be happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRgs3yp9bbg

[Pulcinella]

How about: The As and Bs have come out crooked?

But in maths (algebra) a and A will not be the same!
Using apostrophes in plurals such as these seems more prevalent in the US papers I get to edit.
I take them out (risking the wrath of the authors), maintaining that a change of font is adequate if the plural form really needs to be used (variable in italic, s in roman), or, more usually, also remove the s and make the sense plural by using such terminology as .......(complicated equation), where the p represent pedants and the q quibblers!

Loved Panini's, by the way!

[ardcarp]

Read it. Examples chosen especially to be ambiguous, but in everyday use, 99 times out of 100 there would be no problem.

[Pabmusic]

Place names seem quite unpredictable. Earls Court but Baron's Court; Shepherd's Bush Green but Golders Green and Palmers Green. Why no apostrophes for All Souls (Oxford), Bury St Edmunds, Johns Hopkins University, Owens College (Manchester), St Albans, St Andrews, St Bees, St Helens (Merseyside), St Kitts, St Leonards, St Neots (Cambridgeshire)?

I grew up in Chandler's Ford and went to Peter Symonds' School in Winchester. Both junior and grammar schools were 'hot' on enforcing the apostrophes. Now both have dropped them, because it causes confusion.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I ... went to Peter Symonds' School in Winchester.

i was there 65-72 Pabs. You??

[Pabmusic]

i was there 65-72 Pabs. You??

1964-71. Well I never!

[Serial_Apologist]

Homogeneous

My 1942 Oxford Dictionary has this word pronounced homoge'neous, with the first e prounounced "ee", but more and more I hear it pronounced homo'geneous with the first e short, and the second omitted altogether.

Which, if either of these, is correct, please?

[Don Petter]

I'm the latter, I think, but maybe there's no homogeneous consensus?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Homogeneous

My 1942 Oxford Dictionary has this word pronounced homoge'neous, with the first e prounounced "ee", but more and more I hear it pronounced homo'geneous with the first e short, and the second omitted altogether.

Which, if either of these, is correct, please?

The earlier pronunciation sounded very like "homo-genius". Wonder if that had anything to do with its demise?

[jean]

Homogeneous

My 1942 Oxford Dictionary has this word pronounced homoge'neous, with the first e prounounced "ee", but more and more I hear it pronounced homo'geneous with the first e short, and the second omitted altogether.

Which, if either of these, is correct, please?

Homogeneous and homogenous are two different words. Your dictionary has probably got a separate entry for the second.

[Serial_Apologist]

Homogeneous and homogenous are two different words. Your dictionary has probably got a separate entry for the second.

No only the first, jean:

"homoge.nious, a. Of the same kind; consisting of parts all of the same kind, uniform. Hence or cogn. homogene.ITY, homoge.neousNESS, nn, homogeneousLY adv. [f. schol. L homogeneus f. Gk HOMO(genes f. genos kind) = OUS]"

(The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English - Adapted by H.W.Fowler and F.G Fowler from The Oxford Dictionary - Third Edition 1934 reprinted 1940, not 1942, sorry!)

[vinteuil]

Homogeneous and homogenous are two different words. Your dictionary has probably got a separate entry for the second.

... isn't it a little more complicated than that, jean? - or are you being disingenuous?

Yes, my [first edn] OED has separate entries for homogeneous and homogenous.

But I note that in the 1976 Supplement to the OED under homogeneous there is a footnote -

¶ The spelling homogenous is less common than the pronunc. [homo'djinus], which perh. owes its currency partly to the vb. homogenize and its derivs.

(The six 'homogenous' examples, still in the 'homogeneous' entry, following the footnote (from 1956, 1961, 1964,1970, 1971, 1972) seem to have the meaning 'homogeneous'. )

On the same page it is writ :

homogenous, var *HOMOGENEOUS a.

[Bryn]

My 1971 OED gives homogeneous (the word we are concerned with), homogenous (a specifically biological term indicating common ancestry) and homogonous (another biological term, indicating similar reproductive organs).

[jean]

... isn't it a little more complicated than that, jean?

No more than the difference between 'ομοιουσιος and 'ομοουσιος, wouldn't you say?

But seriously...would the pronunciation/spelling homogenous for homogeneous have taken root without some memory, however dim, of the other word? Or was it just the existence of homogenise that did it?

(I didn't think anyone pronounced heterogeneous as heterogenous, but I checked, and apparently they do, even thought there's no separate word heterogenous. I don't know where this leaves whatever argument I was trying to make.)