Next Noble Pen Meeting
January 12th, 2017 at 7 pm
Scott’s Family Restaurant
1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids
News
Carrie Fisher, who died recently, is best remembered as Princess Leia but was also an author.
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Simon and Schuster will publish a book by an author who was banned from Twitter. Some S&S authors are offended, but other people see it as a free speech issue. The controversy will guarantee high sales for S&S.
Victories
Dylan sent a novel to his editor. He got another Patrian sponsor.
Cassie’s Until Death Do Us Part was listed as a blogger’s top read of 2016. She outlined two novels. Her poll to name a character had the highest number of views she has seen.
Dakota signed up for a writing conference retreat in mid February (and in a warmer place).
Nick’s railfan photos were accepted for publication.
Education
The apostrophe is a simple little punctuation mark that gets widely misused. It has two principle duties:
-forming possessives, as John’s car = car belonging to John
-showing where letters are left out in contractions, as don’t = do not and it’s = it is.
However, it is NOT involved in making most plurals, a misconception that seems to be growing among the US population. You order two pizzas, not two pizza’s. They mean “cars for sale” not “car’s for sale.” I bought music CDs in the 1990s. The main exception is that it is permissible to use an apostrophe to form the plural of single letters or numbers (where not spelled out), as I crossed my i’s and dotted my t’s. He rolled a pair of 3’s.
Perhaps some of the confusion comes from forming plural possessives. If a plural word does not end in s, then the possessive is formed just like singular possessives: the women’s club, the children’s play, etc. If the plural ends in an s that you would pronounce, it also follows the same pattern: Dickens’s book. If you would not pronounce the s in a plural possessive, then use an s followed by apostrophe, as the girls’ team improved after two weeks’ practice in Texas’ weather.
If a word is already possessive, then no apostrophe or s is used, as his book, her writing, or its color. Please do NOT write it’s color as this is wrong.
The character is also used as a second kind of quote rather than as an apostrophe. British publications use it as we use the double quote on dialog. We use single quotes inside a normal double quote in order to distinguish something being quoted inside the quote.
Here are some good links for information about apostrophes.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/apostrophe
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp
Upcoming Schedule
Jan 12
Cassie
Riley
Aime W.
Jan 19
Uriah
Riley
Open slot
Jan 26
Dakota
Open slots
February 2
Laura
Cassie
Open slot
February 9
Open slots
Keep Writing,
Bill