{"id":386,"date":"2008-10-14T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/the-areas-first-formidable-competition\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T19:17:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:17:38","slug":"the-areas-first-formidable-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/10\/the-areas-first-formidable-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"“… the areas first formidable competition …”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this in a press release today.<\/p>\n

Problem:<\/strong>
\nA possessive apostrophe is missing.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\nThe press release<\/a> was about AT&T U-verse service in Nashville, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

The full sentence was “AT&T has begun pulling permits in Nashville to roll out its new TV service, the areas first formidable competition for Comcast cable and the satellite TV companies that operate here.”<\/p>\n

A possessive apostrophe is missing in the word “area”.<\/p>\n

I believe that the number of people who write possessive nouns simply by adding the letter “s” is increasing.<\/p>\n

I believe that this increasingly common mistake is due to ignorance and to the growing number of people who use text messaging, for which punctuation beyond a comma, period, exclamation mark, or question mark is often difficult.<\/p>\n

And I believe that this mistake is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the possessive apostrophe than to include it.<\/p>\n

Solution:<\/strong>
\n“… the area’s first formidable competition …”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw this in a press release today. Problem: A possessive apostrophe is missing. Explanation: The press release was about AT&T U-verse service in Nashville, Tennessee. The full sentence was “AT&T has begun pulling permits in Nashville to roll out its new TV service, the areas first formidable competition for Comcast cable and the satellite…<\/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":[10,19,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apostrophes","category-devolution-toward-simpler","category-possessives"],"yoast_head":"\n"... the areas first formidable competition ..." - 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\/10\/the-areas-first-formidable-competition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""... the areas first formidable competition ..." - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I saw this in a press release today. 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