punctuation geeks

[dakegra]

Oh, the apostrophe thing in my previous post - someone linked to this apostrophe test on twitter last night. I took issue with one of the questions



You have to select *one* option as the correct answer. Go for it.

Question 10:
a) The Roman's bridges and roads were vital for moving the troops' supplies.
b) The Romans' bridges and roads were vital for moving the troops' supplies.
c) The Romans' bridges and roads were vital for moving the troop's supplies.
d) The Romans bridge's and road's were vital for moving the troops supplies.

Which did you go for? Here's my reasoning:

a) works, if you're talking about one specific Roman, and if he built (or was responsible for building) the bridges and roads being used by the many troops.
b) works, if you have lots of Romans and lots of troops. This is the 'correct' answer.
c) also works (imho), if you're talking about one *specific* troop.
d) is an offence against punctuation, and should never be spoken of in polite company.

thoughts, comments, rants welcomed.

Comments

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

Option b would be more correct if it was:

The Romans' bridges and roads were vital for moving troops' supplies.

The the (hey, remember them?) before troops' implies a single troop in motion, and moves it into a grey area.

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

ooh, I don't know about that. Surely you can say "the troops" and mean more than one?

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

It makes it ambiguous in that sentence structure.

The troop's or the troops' at the beginning of the sentense is fine (as in the Romans'), but adding it again later on can separate the plural from a singular option, for correct sentence structure...

Oh, and I get a headache just looking at the last one!

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

I'm going to disagree with you. We talk about "the troops", rather than just "troops", in order to identify them with the particular nation or set of nations. If we're talking about a single troop then we would probably say "a troop". Removing the the from that sentence makes it less clear that we're talking about the Romans' own troops, rather than troops in general.

[songster.livejournal.com]

Nah, could have been some other troop using the roads, e.g. "Boudicca sent a troop to intercept the Roman scouts. Ironically, the Romans' own roads were essential to the troop's swift passage." As ayoub says, the "the" shifts things from (b) towards (c) as it's the definite article, focusing on a definite (singular) troop.

As far as (a) is concerned, "The Roman" could be used in the figurative sense, with a singular Roman standing for the nation, e.g. "The Roman of today is a mean, swarthy fellow. Full of lechery, he has more in common with the Frenchman than his own noble forebears. Where now are the heirs of Caesar and Crassus?"

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

You might be right :)

[redatt.livejournal.com]

They are all okay except the last one which is just bad and wrong.

So there.

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Your analysis is correct. The question assumes that you have sufficient background knowledge about Romans to know that the most sensible configuration is to speak of lots of Romans and lots of troops. Punctuation rules are all good, but once you get past a certain basic level, much of language relies on shared culture.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Hm. I got all of these correct.

These sentences are worded very carefully to indicate whether the subject/object of the sentence is singular or plural, so bearing that in mind I would have expected them to have used "this [or that] troop's" if they intended the word to be singular.

A is correct if we are talking about one (very busy) Roman, and C would be correct, if we were sure that "the" in that sentence referred to a single troop. But the sentences just weren't that sloppily worded.

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

I agree!

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

Your assessment is correct, though I made the correct assumptions as to what they had in mind and picked b.

In fact, I took the test and got them all right. But I suspect this doesn't surprise you.

Annoyingly, I do sometime find myself typing a ' before an s at the end of the word on autopilot when it doesn't belong there, but that's a typo rather than something I've done on purpose (my fingers made me do it).

[songster.livejournal.com]

Number 3 is also ambiguous - could be a single parent, and you wanted to be obscure about the said parent's gender. Possible transexual?

Number 7 is ambiguous because "it" might not refer to the cat. Take for example a fantasy story akin to Androcles and the lion, where a (singular) mouse has worn out its paws rubbing liniment into the (plural) cats' backs.

[maryrcrumpton.livejournal.com]

I agree with your analysis :-)

Mary x