Journal

Monday, January 31, 2005

more from apostrophe hell

Sarasota!

Mini MirrorMask review here: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600107916,00.html

Lovely Sundance photos of me and Dave McKean online at http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/2839

Let's see. Lots of people wrote in to remind me that the ancient-proper-name-ending-in-"s" exception for possessives is straight out of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. First page, in fact. You can find an online version here:http://www.bartleby.com/141/Paul

Other people wrote to tell me that the Associated Press Manual of Style, and the Chicago Manual of Style say different things, and many e-mails from around the world letting me know that, for example, in Israeli schools we are taught that the "blahs's" combination is just bad grammar and that it's always "blahs' " . We actually get points off on tests for this.And I'm still wondering why they asked you that :)Galia

I found an excellent summary of the various points of view of the apostrophe in question in the debate on Wikipedia's house style (remember what I said about it being a house style issue?): go and read the discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style and learn.

......

In doing a search on the Narnia action figures by Gentle Giant Studios I saw that they are also doing Mirrormask action figures. I have only been reading your journal for a couple of months, so if you mentioned this, I missed it. http://www.entertainmentearth.com/hitlist.asp?theme=Mirror+Mask (I am a brand new Neil Gaiman fan after hearing Coraline on a long car trip.)Dona

Not sure they've been mentioned for a while. So yes, Dark Horse are doing MirrorMask models (the ones in the pictures are early prototypes.)

Hi Neil,There's a rumor going around town that you were at a bar in Manila a few years back. A friend mentioned this to me because we were talking about the possibility of you coming to Manila for a book signing, as you mentioned in your blog a few days ago. I was wondering, have you ever been to the Philippines?Regards,Tania

Nope, never been to Manila. Never been to the Philippines either. That's why I was interested in coming (also because of the enormous numbers of people who come in to this blog from the Philippines, and the people from the Philippines who seem to show up at almost every signing to let me know that I really ought to visit the Philippines).

(As a general rule, established over years of doing this blog: if ever you meet someone in a bar or on a bus or hitchhiking or in an internet chat place who claims to be me, it's not me. Really it's not. I still can't figure out why people like pretending to be me, or why the people they are telling this to don't ever ask them to produce some kind of ID. But it's not been me so far. I don't do chat rooms, and if I'm actually in a bar I'll probably be in the corner with a notebook.)

Oops. Late for interview. Gotta run.