Jonathan Swift v. Apostrophes
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Just edited a piece mentioning the companies Hays, Schroders and Lloyds. They were named for men called Hay, Schröder and Lloyd but all (I checked) officially lack an apostrophe.
People occasionally throw a fit—illiteracy triumphant!—but it does not seem to have done any harm whatsoever.
— Lane Greene (@lanegreene.bsky.social) November 25, 2024 at 7:03 AM
[I don't see Lane's article yet — I'll add a link when it appears.]
Recent peeving about apostrophes goes in both directions. As in Lane's examples, the problem could be leaving them out where the standard says they should be present; but it also could be inserting them where the standard is to leave them out, in possessive it's or in plural nouns.
More than three centuries ago, Jonathan Swift published (in The Tatler, 9/28/1710) an epic peeve about "the continual corruption of our English tongue", in which the use of apostrophes to signal contractions is the second of four complaints, attributed to "a natural tendency toward relapsing into barbarity, which delights in monosyllables, and uniting of mute consonants".
Swift's (perhaps fictional) correspondent quotes this offending passage:
I cou'dn't get the things you sent for all about town. I tho't to ha' come down myself, and then I'd ha' bro't 'um; but ha'nt don't, and I believe I can't do't, that's pozz. Tom begins to g'imself airs, because he's going with the plenipo's. ’Tis said the French king will bamboozle us agen, which causes many speculations. The Jacks, and others of that kidney, are verry uppish and alert upon't, as you may see by their phizz's. Will Hazard has got the hipps, having lost to the tune of five hundr'd pound, tho' he understands play very well, nobody better. He has promis't me upon rep to leave off play; but you know 'tis a weakness he's too apt to give into, tho' he has as much wit as any man, nobody more: he has lain incog ever since. The mobb's very quiet with us now. I believe you tho't I banter'd you in my last like a country put. I shan't leave town this month, &c.
The analysis, with the elision discussion in bold face:
The first thing that strikes your eye, is the breaks at the end of almost every sentence; of which I know not the use, only that it is a refinement, and very frequently practised. Then you will observe the abbreviations and elisions, by which consonants of most obdurate sounds are joined together without one softening vowel to intervene: and all this only to make one syllable of two, directly contrary to the example of the Greeks and Romans; altogether of the Gothick strain, and of a natural tendency toward relapsing into barbarity, which delights in monosyllables, and uniting of mute consonants, as it is observable in all the Northern languages. And this is still more visible in the next refinement, which consists in pronouncing the first syllable in a word that has many, and dismissing the rest; such as phizz, hipps, mobb, pozz, rep, and many more; when we are already overloaded with monosyllables, which are the disgrace of our language. Thus we cram one syllable, and cut off the rest; as the owl fattened her mice after she had bit off their legs, to prevent them from running away; and if ours be the same reason for maiming words, it will certainly answer the end; for I am sure no other nation will desire to borrow them. Some words are hitherto bet fairly split, and therefore only in their way to perfection, as incog and plenipo; but in a short time, it is to be hoped, they will be further docked to inc and plen. This reflection has made me of late years very impatient for a peace, which I believe would save the lives of many brave words as well as men. The war has introduced abundance of polysyllables, which will never be able to live many more campaigns. Speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communications, circumvallations, battalions, as numerous as they are, if they attack us too frequently in our coffeehouses, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear.
"The third refinement observable in the letter I send you, consists in the choice of certain words invented by some pretty fellows, such as banter, bamboozle, country put, and kidney, as it is there applied; some of which are now struggling for the vogue, and others are in possession of it. I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress of mob and banter, but have been plainly born down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.
"In the last place, you are to take notice of certain choice phrases scattered through the letter; some of them tolerable enough, till they were worn to rags by servile imitators. You might easily find them, although they were not in a different print, and therefore I need not disturb them.
Some previous posts about apostrophes:
"A soul candidly acknowledging it's fault", 1/9/2004
"Reads, zaps, and digresses", 6/21/2004
"'Grammar cranks' of the right", 8/30/2005
"Worth a repetition", 10/4/2005
"Peeveblogging", 10/25/2005
"Shooting too good", 11/5/2005
"Patriots Day, Patriot's Day, and Patriots' Day", 4/17/2006
"Punctuation tip's", 6/30/2006
"Angry linguistic mobs with torches", 4/16/2008
"'Grammar vigilantes' brought to justice", 8/22/2008
"Apostrophe catastrophe", 1/31/2009
"More on apostrophes in names", 2/7/2009
"BBC in diner truck apostrophe scandal", 10/5/2010
"Google n-gram apostrophe problem fixed", 1/2/2011
"Apostropocalypse Now", 1/15/2012
"Does the apostrophe ever represent a sound?", 1/16/2012
"For want of an apostrophe…", 10/11/2014
"Signs and wonders", 6/12/2021
"Harris'(s)", 8/15/2024
"'Deppenapostrophe': Is English guilty after all?", 10/12/2024
J.W. Brewer said,
November 25, 2024 @ 11:52 am
Note that it's Lloyds Bank plc but elsewhere in London financial circles the insurance marketplace is Lloyd's.* I would not be so confident that the -s in Lloyds Bank is a possessive marker rather than a plural marker. The original Mr. Lloyd was joined in the business by at least one of his sons, and one can imagine a business named either "Lloyd & Lloyd" or "Lloyd & Son(s)" turning into "Lloyds."
There are or have been a bunch of English law firms with a single name ending in -s where my own sense of the history is that plural-marker (sometimes geniune, sometimes fictive) is a better analysis than possessive marker, and it would not surprise me if the same usage carried over to banking firms. Example minimal pair: American lawyers will refer to the well-known New-York-based firm Cravath Swaine & Moore as "Cravath" for short, but I have heard English solicitors refer to it as "Cravaths." It's more likely that that's a fictive-plural synonym for Cravath et al. than a possessive indicating the firm belonging (in some sense) to the long-dead Mr. Cravath.
*The wiki article about the 17th-century coffee house that the insurance market grew out of consistently uses the apostrophe but has a photo of a commemorative blue plaque that seems to omit it.
J.W. Brewer said,
November 25, 2024 @ 12:05 pm
An example from this side of the Atlantic of the plural-market phenomenon is the Toronto-based law firm currently known as Torys LLP, which when I first had occasion to become aware of it back in the 1990's was still Tory Tory DesLauriers & Binnington. (The founding Mr. Tory had two sons who grew up to also become partners in the firm – I don't know which two of the three the 1990's iteration of the name referenced.) But this is an example of Canadians following British usage – I would find it unidiomatic in an AmEng context.
Philip Schnell said,
November 25, 2024 @ 12:34 pm
This seems to be a pretty common practice in the corporate and banking worlds in the UK specifically (Barclays also comes to mind), and J.W. Brewer’s comment above seems on point, even if the plural is strictly notional in some cases.
However, another reason for eliding the apostrophe (apart from the obscure dictates of branding) is that firms like these that are commonly referred to by single names eventually run into the problem of how to handle a nominalized possessive in prose when you need a possessive form of it.
That is to say: “Lloyds’ acquisition of Halifax Bank of Scotland” isn’t jarring at all, but if the firm were named “Lloyd’s,” you would be stuck between re-using the possessive (which seems to imply that somebody named “Lloyd” is doing the acquiring) or committing some barbarity like “Lloyd’s’” (?) or “Lloyd’s’s” (!?). Swift would have had a field day with that one.
jhholland said,
November 25, 2024 @ 1:34 pm
A more everyday example is the grocery store chain called "Wegmans." No apostrophe.
Xtifr said,
November 25, 2024 @ 2:23 pm
Even if it's a plural, surely it should be (for sticklers) Lloyds' Bank (or Lloyds's Bank)! :)
Michael Vnuk said,
November 25, 2024 @ 3:48 pm
Interesting to see 'bamboozle' in this piece from 1710. I would have guessed that it was 19th-century American in origin. Several references tell me that it is first recorded in 1703.
ycx said,
November 25, 2024 @ 4:47 pm
The "Schroders" example is interesting, because modern German grammar rules consider use of the apostrophe for the possessive or plural to be incorrect. Doing so is considered using English orthography in German and is known as the Deppenapostroph (fool's apostrophe).
Daniel Barkalow said,
November 25, 2024 @ 5:53 pm
If Swift thought that the Romans didn't use elisions to make one syllable of what would have been two, he must have had a lot of trouble reciting Vergil (multum ille et" = 3 syllables) and Catullus ("odi et" = 2), particularly because lines only scan like the rest of the poem if you elide properly. (Admittedly, the Romans didn't use elision to make consonant clusters that wouldn't have been there, but syllable reduction and, in particular, phrases with only as many syllables as words are easily found in just the Latin poetry my classes had us memorize.)
Mark Liberman said,
November 25, 2024 @ 6:59 pm
@ycx: "The "Schroders" example is interesting, because modern German grammar rules consider use of the apostrophe for the possessive or plural to be incorrect. Doing so is considered using English orthography in German and is known as the Deppenapostroph (fool's apostrophe)."
See
"English influence on German Spelling"
"English is innocent"
"'Deppenapostrophe': Is English guilty after all?"
Jonathan Smith said,
November 25, 2024 @ 7:25 pm
hilarious, epic *satirical* peeve it should be said
"The war has introduced abundance of polysyllables, which will never be able to live many more campaigns. Speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communications, circumvallations, battalions, as numerous as they are, if they attack us too frequently in our coffee-houses, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear."
haha, well at least spec, op(s), comm(s) are done, with prelim(s) "on its way to perfection"
"Some words are hitherto bet fairly split" > but, among other apparent oopses in this version
cameron said,
November 25, 2024 @ 7:26 pm
the New York steakhouse Keens was in the news recently. it's been in business since 1885. some sources say it once had a possessive apostrophe – if that's so it was a long time ago
J.W. Brewer said,
November 25, 2024 @ 8:39 pm
If you want to get a steak in Manhattan you can choose between apostrophe-shunning joints like Keens and Gallaghers, on the one hand, or apostrophe-brandishing joints like Delmonico's and Wolfgang's, on the other. Plus I guess various other places whose names are not spelled with a word-final S. Or where a word-final S is not going to make even the prickliest peever think an apostrophe might be indicated, like Le Relais de Venise.
Philip Taylor said,
November 26, 2024 @ 3:10 am
« A more everyday example is the grocery store chain called "Wegmans." No apostrophe. » — where 'everyday' is very much in the eye of the beholder. For this Briton, "Barclays", "Lloyds", "Coutts", etc., are everyday encounters, while "Wegmans" is completely unknown.
Richard Hershberger said,
November 26, 2024 @ 5:10 am
Is Swift complaining about using apostrophes to mark contractions, or about the use of contractions themselves?
Mark Liberman said,
November 26, 2024 @ 5:48 am
@Richard Hershberger: "Is Swift complaining about using apostrophes to mark contractions, or about the use of contractions themselves?"
He's mainly complaining about the contractions, as shown by his adjacent complaint about abbreviations like phizz and mob. But the contractions would mostly be opaque without the apostrophes, so I think he's complaining about them as well.
Philip Taylor said,
November 26, 2024 @ 7:44 am
Sigh. Just hit this one, at a web site (Marriners, Rock) that should definitely know better —
Robert Coren said,
November 26, 2024 @ 10:05 am
The appearance of cou'dn't in Swift's first sentence made think of Lewis Carroll, who insisted on putting "extra" apostrophes in many common negating contractions (e.g., sha'n't, wo'n't, ca'n't), claiming that they were needed to represent omitted letters. He appears to have glossed won't as a contraction of would not, which appears dubious to me, and his argument for the extra apostrophe in can't was that it must be the first "n" that's omitted, because surely a writer wouldn't intend to represent not with a mere 't.
Chris Button said,
November 26, 2024 @ 12:47 pm
Perhaps a better question would be why more and more brands are making the conscious choice to drop apostrophes. More approachable branding, not to mention consistency with URLs, really only leaves two options today: 1. No "s" at all; 2. An "s" without an apostrophe.
Howard said,
November 26, 2024 @ 2:44 pm
Three Canadian grocery store chains: Loblaws, Sobeys and Zehrs.
Bob Ladd said,
November 27, 2024 @ 1:49 pm
Nobody seem to be worked up about the omission of the umlaut on Schröder, which (according to the OP) was the name of the founder of "Schroders".
J.W. Brewer said,
November 27, 2024 @ 3:12 pm
@Bob Ladd, the Schröder who founded the firm was succeeded by his son, who expanded the business and became sufficiently Anglicized that he changed his name from Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Schröder to the umlaut-free John Henry William Schroder and eventually deigned to allow Queen Victoria to make him a Baronet. I imagine the name of the firm may have consequently lost its own umlaut at around the same time.
Bob Michael said,
November 30, 2024 @ 12:25 pm
I’d heard that many companies don’t use an apostrophe in their names (like Macys) to comply with national laws that require that company names be in the native language. I think the main concern was France and Quebec, that forbade the use of company names with English grammar.
Philip Taylor said,
November 30, 2024 @ 1:11 pm
Bob — "I think the main concern was France and Quebec, that forbade the use of company names with English grammar." — The opening episode of the 1960's drama series Maigret, starring Rupert Davies as the eponymous hero, is set in [sic]Picratt's[sic].
Philip Taylor said,
November 30, 2024 @ 1:19 pm
Which (I now see) was Simenon's choice of name in the original French text : cf. Maigret-au-Picratts-Ldp-Simenon [Abebooks]