Even the notoriously smarty pants "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" (and I say that with affection and admiration) makes a mistake that bedevils many of us. In a caption promoting Friday night's story about Sarah Palin's interview, the "Countdown" crew on MSNBC mixed up whose (possessive) and who's (contraction for "who is").
We have only one rule to remember: Possessive pronouns never use an apostrophe.
Spaces at the government trough are filling up fast and the leaders of national higher education associations are moving quickly in hopes of getting a piece of any sort of economic stimulus package that may become available.
Locally, universities are approaching this feeding frenzy with some caution.
Inside Higher Ed has a good breakdown of what many higher ed associations are requesting in bailout money.
Here are some highlights:
• The Association of American Universities, of which Duke and UNC Chapel Hill are members, is asking President-Elect Barack Obama's administration for $1.8 billion for science research and personnel, and $750 million for new science facilities.
Michael Schoenfeld, Duke's vice president for public affairs and government relations, told me that Duke believes in the value of science and would welcome stimulus money that funds the research itself and the people who do it.
"For Duke and research universities, it's more than medical research," he said. "It's energy research, it's defense research. [Research] is a proven source of innovation and economic activity for the country."
For Duke, a private institution, money for facilities isn't as critical an issue, Schoenfeld said, pointing out that public universities would likely benefit more from facilities funding.
• Thirteen national groups that advocate for the rights of students have penned a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting, among other things, an increase in the value of the Pell Grant to $7,000 (the current max is $4,731), more money for federal work-study, and other funding for loan programs. (Note: That letter is the first attachment below)
• About two dozen major public universities have signed a letter put together by the Carnegie Corporation proposing the Higher Education Investment Act. It demands that any stimulus legislation include a signficant investment in the nation's public colleges and universities.
The signatories include many of public higher education's elites — like Texas, Virginia, California, Maryland and the University of Wisconsin system, as well as the American Council on Education, whose president, Molly Corbett Broad, is the UNC system's former chief.
But there are no UNC system campuses on the list. A UNC system spokeswoman told me there are no plans for the UNC system or any of its campuses to join the initiative.
(The second attachment below is the four-page letter detailing the public universities' proposal. The third attachment below is a list of which institutions signed the letter.)
A UNC Wilmington psychologist has been named the state's professor of the year.
Kate Bruce, a psychology professor who also directs the university's honors scholars program, was named the North Carolina Professor of the Year.
The award is given by the Carnegie Foundation and the Council for the Support and Advancement of Education. It recognizes teaching and the impact of education on undergraduate students.
Bruce has worked at UNCW since 1984 and has directed the honors program since 1999. In that time, the number of students to enter the program each year has grown from 75 to 125, and the number of students participating in departmental honors in their academic majors has doubled.
She is the third UNCW faculty member to win the award.
Two advertisements caught our eyes this week. They have apostrophe problems, but different ones. The first, pictured below, falls into the old trap of using an apostrophe to make a plural. The shopping center mentioned in this ad, which came as a direct mail flier, is Clayton Corners (multiple corners).
The second ad appeared on television. It has a more unusual apostrophe problem, as you can see below. We use apostrophes to make nouns possessive, a vestige of a time when English was a more inflected language, when words changed form to indicate their function in a sentence. Pronouns still change form when they are used in the possessive case, but nouns merely take 's or ' . I wonder if the ad writers feared the apostrophe. Or maybe the apostrophe was just omitted inadvertently.
At the risk of sounding like a schoolmarm, I am going to repeat something that we learned early in elementary school.
Here are the simplified rules for making a common noun possessive.
There are, of course, variations on the rules, but these rules will carry us through most cases.
Update: A commenter questioned whether the shopping center mentioned in the first ad was indeed Clayton Corners. It is. Below is a photo of the shopping center's sign.
Today's quiz has five sentences. You will choose the better of two choices given in the sentences. Have fun and leave a comment.
By the way, not everything on the Triangle Grammar Guide quiz or on the blog is about grammar. "Grammar" is my shorthand for all the language problems that come up.
Click here or on the question mark icon to begin. Have fun.
