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I say a Hail Mary. And I mean the prayer, as a sort of shorthand. If I said Hail Marys, I would mean more than one Hail Mary. But if in my mind I was thinking that they were her prayers, which they are, surely that turns them into an object (her prayers, said to her, and only ever said to her, and belonging to her as they have been given to her) and therefore they should be apostrophied?
If you are thinking of the Hail Mary prayer as a sort of unit rather than something you are giving to Mary then it would need no apostrophe...
No, there should be no apostrophe as it is just a plural, but I have thought before that it is quite hard to write plurals of letter and have it look right or understandable...
I suppose you could make them words, Liz. A serious dictionary might help here for spellings. I mean for esses, ayes, pees and an em. What do you think?
[quote=Liz!]I say a Hail Mary. And I mean the prayer, as a sort of shorthand. If I said Hail Marys, I would mean more than one Hail Mary. But if in my mind I was thinking that they were her prayers, which they are, surely that turns them into an object (her prayers, said to her, and only ever said to her, and belonging to her as they have been given to her) and therefore they should be apostrophied?[/quote]
[quote=dorothyd]that's the way I was thinking, Liz.[/quote]
Me too. I'm sticking to my original gut feeling on this one and declare that I did not make a grammatical mistake in my challenge entry - so there! ;)
i am being hunted by the punctuation police the grammar squad are involved as well they will soon catch up with me if i stay out here in open ground i will turn off my spag checker because it is now screaming at me like a vuvuzela i have already shut down all capital letters
if i can make it to the poem near the bottom of the page in between the advert which says if i send them ten thousand pounds they will publish my novel and the one for a writers retreat on an oil rig i will be undercover and in a better position to escape
i have arrived safe and well it is one of those free verse poems a reader who is not interested in poetry will soon turn the page and not notice i am there all i have got to do now in a covert manner is to creep down all the way to escape from fictionland and leap right off the page
i begin my journey through the lines of verse
and attempt to crawl past two stanzas
with no forced end rhymes
or inversions
an enjambment is a welcome sight
as i can run on to the next line
with confidence
at last i have escaped
i feel pleased with myself if i can extend this story to about 140000 words i will be able to get it published with the spare ten grand i have in my back pocket
If it's dialogue in a novel it would be wrong I think to have written it grammatically, when it's not the way your character is speaks, so in this case I think it depends on the circumstances!!!
Okay, by saying 'the baker's' you've omitted the word shop/store which would make the posssessive correct, otherwise the phrase is colloquial. The other was would be to say at the bakery I bought a loaf of bread.
No, both are valid. You can shop at the baker's (shop implied) or live at your parents' (house implied). However, if you claim that Hail Mary actually means Hail Mary's prayer (the prayer of Hail Mary? Doesn't make any sense at all) with the 'prayer' implied, then the singular Hail Mary should be Hail Mary's (prayer implied), which of course it is not. And the plural would be Hail Marys' or Hail Marys's.
A Hail Mary is the name of a type of prayer (coined from the first two words of the prayer), just as a daschund is a type of dog. You don't say (in the plural) daschund's (dog implied), you say daschunds. Similarly Hail Mary's is incorrect, Hail Marys correct.
Comments
Stalagmites, stalactites, gotta have a system.
Rules of grammar sometimes make something look wrong. Hail Marys looks wrong. The spellchecker has underlined it there.
You can't have a possesive apostrophe without an object.
Turning something plural shouldn't create the need for an apostrophe.
If you refer to a group of girls named Mary, they are Marys, not Mary's.
If you are thinking of the Hail Mary prayer as a sort of unit rather than something you are giving to Mary then it would need no apostrophe...
And another thing. What about letters of the alphabet? Would one write: There are four s's in Mississippi, four i's, two p's and an m?
;)
[quote=dorothyd]that's the way I was thinking, Liz.[/quote]
Me too. I'm sticking to my original gut feeling on this one and declare that I did not make a grammatical mistake in my challenge entry - so there! ;)
You can't have a possesive apostrophe without an object. [/quote]
Not quite sure if I've understood you here, but what about:
"John lives at home, but Mary lives at her parents'."
(OK, I suspect somewhere there should be a question mark.)
Although it should be 'Mary lives with her parents.''
i am being hunted by the punctuation police the grammar squad are involved as well they will soon catch up with me if i stay out here in open ground i will turn off my spag checker because it is now screaming at me like a vuvuzela i have already shut down all capital letters
if i can make it to the poem near the bottom of the page in between the advert which says if i send them ten thousand pounds they will publish my novel and the one for a writers retreat on an oil rig i will be undercover and in a better position to escape
i have arrived safe and well it is one of those free verse poems a reader who is not interested in poetry will soon turn the page and not notice i am there all i have got to do now in a covert manner is to creep down all the way to escape from fictionland and leap right off the page
i begin my journey through the lines of verse
and attempt to crawl past two stanzas
with no forced end rhymes
or inversions
an enjambment is a welcome sight
as i can run on to the next line
with confidence
at last i have escaped
i feel pleased with myself if i can extend this story to about 140000 words i will be able to get it published with the spare ten grand i have in my back pocket
At/In the baker's, I bought a loaf of bread
is incorrect?
Okay, by saying 'the baker's' you've omitted the word shop/store which would make the posssessive correct, otherwise the phrase is colloquial. The other was would be to say at the bakery I bought a loaf of bread.
A Hail Mary is the name of a type of prayer (coined from the first two words of the prayer), just as a daschund is a type of dog. You don't say (in the plural) daschund's (dog implied), you say daschunds. Similarly Hail Mary's is incorrect, Hail Marys correct.
Or, of course, it could be Hails Mary? ;-)