{"id":372,"date":"2008-09-30T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T18:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/the-reasons-why-are-threefold\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T19:07:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:07:35","slug":"the-reasons-why-are-threefold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/09\/the-reasons-why-are-threefold\/","title":{"rendered":"“The reason’s why are threefold:”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this at Freetricity.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Problem:<\/strong>
\nAn apostrophe appears where it should not.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\n“The reason’s why are threefold:” — with an apostrophe between the noun “reason” and the letter “s” — appeared on a Freetricity.com Web page<\/a> about the E2D Windmaster and the three reasons that less than 3% of U.S. homes have a renewable energy-source product.<\/p>\n

An apostrophe has very limited use in the formation of a plural noun. Here are the situations:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. to form plurals of lower-case letters;<\/li>\n
  2. to form groups of years;<\/li>\n
  3. to form plurals of numbers;<\/li>\n
  4. to form plurals of symbols;<\/li>\n
  5. to form plurals of some short words.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    However, most authorities recommend omission of the apostrophe for situations 2 through 4, given that there is no possibility of misreading when the apostrophe is omitted.<\/p>\n

    Given that the noun “reason” does not match any of these five situations, we have the solution.<\/p>\n

    Solution:<\/strong>
    \n“The reasons why are threefold:”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I saw this at Freetricity.com. Problem: An apostrophe appears where it should not. Explanation: “The reason’s why are threefold:” — with an apostrophe between the noun “reason” and the letter “s” — appeared on a Freetricity.com Web page about the E2D Windmaster and the three reasons that less than 3% of U.S. homes have a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,28,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apostrophes","category-plurals","category-possessives"],"yoast_head":"\n"The reason's why are threefold:" - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/09\/the-reasons-why-are-threefold\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The reason's why are threefold:" - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I saw this at Freetricity.com. 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