NVDT – Writerly Concerns – Use it? Or lose it?

“Oh, great,” everyone groans. “Grammar.”

But no. I did some exhaustive (a couple of hours) research on the apostrophe. Along the way I learned several things. There is a shit-ton of bad advice out there. From requiring attribution to every line of dialogue to leagues of academic know-it-alls with opinions that amount more to linguistic discrimination than real grammatical advice.

I’m not questioning all uses of the apostrophe. Regardless of whether we can see or hear it in spoken context where our mind will make assumptions plurality or possession, it is useful in the written word for clarity. I’m not going to get into James’s, James’ etc (much, anyway) because The BBC and Cambridge style guides disagree, as do what is preferable for the London and New York Times. Would that be plural? Possessive? Spoken I get it, but should I write a new sentence? The London Times and the New York Times?Are the Times of either place both plural and possessive? The Times of New York. Or New York Time’s? Time as belonging to New York. Or London.

I will tell you, regardless of the rules, The Big Guys make their own. Britain and the United States Governments have dropped –’s as possessive for locations from Kings Cross to Farmersville, Negros Liberty Settlement and Guys Store Crossing. Major corporations have dropped the possessive -s by the dozens. Knotts Berry Farm, Starbucks, Harrods, Walgreens, Nordstroms, Aldis… The list is extreme. The main reason for dropping the ’s is that it makes it friendlier and easier, particularly for internet searches. But we add the possessive to places that don’t have an s at all. The mammoth grocery store chain is Kroger, not Kroger’s. But we say, “I stopped at Kroger’s for bananas.” Linguistic habits.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I took all my recent good ol’ country gals an guys work, copied it, and did a global remove of n’ because no one can say exactly, or even by a majority, if phonetic dialect is excused from the apostrophe. Some snobs say it’s (there’s an apostrophe rule exception) mandatory, and then slight authors who fill the page with them. Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning authors. Going back to the 1920s-30s-40s (there are two rules for numbers as well) authors added the -’ to any dropped letter, as that was one version of the rule. “I been goin’ on an’ on an’ on ‘bout my kin from Miss’sippi an’ you ain’t made nary a peep.” Because the original made up rule was the apostrophe’s job was to denote a dropped or ignored letter, originally a vowel in the first uses of colloquial dialect, the contraction. And one sentence back, ain’t? It weren’t even a word ‘till (either or on till) 1778. And as it’s a substitution for aren’t I guess they threw the apostrophe in just because. Aint. Is Ain a word? Only in the sense that I’ve heard the -t dropped. “Ah ain gwan down tuh Rufus’s no more.” Like the missing -d in and, do we write ain’?

There are those who say skip the dialect. Use occasional improper grammar to set the tone and tell the reader that the character is an old redneck but write their dialogue like an English teacher will grade it. Tell that to Twain and Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Welty. Or Irvine Welsh and Jane Austen.

Then there’s Authenticity. Tom Clancy and many others who try to write dialects that are not their own (either side of the pond trying to write like the other) take a big critical hit, with words like pathetic, obnoxious, laughable. And I agree. But they sell a bazillion books. In my case, in a book that will never see the light of day, I have an American in Cambridge with two Scottish roommates. I took the hint-and-drop-it advice with—

Dishtowel girl gave Deanna the once over, frowned at her low heel dress shoes. “No Wellies? You weren’t told it rains here?” It took Deanna a few seconds to process that from “Nwellies? Ya wernatole eh rines ‘ere?”

“Yes. No. No wellies. Those are rain boots? Rubbers, my dad says, and mom says galoshes. Do I need them? I sort of threw all this together in a big hurry.”

“Will you have a listen to her? Sounds a bit off, but she’s a fine eyeful of lass, I’d say.”

From then on? No Scots for me.

But from what I know, what I hear, what I live around?

Take a southernism. No, take two. “Don’t y’all tump that in the stock tank, y’hear.” Tump. Dump. Personally, I despise the y’know. Ya know? But there are places where colloquialisms will leave people scratchin’ their heads. The second southernism is a true story. A guy I worked with lived in Seattle, born and raised in the Northwest. He married a girl from Louisiana, never met any of her people and for a couple of years thought she’d maybe been married before, because her maiden name was Hebert (Aybear) but when she talked about people from home she’d say, “Bobby an Judy an ‘em went…” “Or Mom an ’em…” See, written out, you almost get it, but to hear it? “Bobby an Judy anem went…” No shit, my friend thought all the people she talked about were all related with the last name Anem. Like a giant family of Anems there in Baa-tone Roooozh. Took him two years and cornerin’ me at a sales meetin’ in Miss’sippi an’ askin’ me ‘bout it after he’d heard a few ‘Sippians say the same thing. He never told his wife, but he said it made their conversations livelier and more enjoyable once he understood what the hell she was sayin’ an she dint have no psycho ex likely to come huntin’ ‘er.

So, here’s the question. Drop dialect? Drop the apostrophe when it doesn’t matter? I’m all for doin’ like the big corporations and newspapers an droppin the fuckin thing all together sept where it counts for clarity and contractions. Sept ain’t. Cause ain’t aint really a contraction, it’s its (!) own word. An offin it where it aint needed does go considerable to cleanin up the page.

An seriously, it aint like it’ll cost me any sales or nothin.

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