It may seem clumsy, but I write and pronounce Mertens's, Jones's, Gauss's, Menelaus's, Pythagoras's, etc. Fowler, writing around WW1, said `It was FORMERLY [my stress] customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s. In verse, & in reverential contexts, this custom is retained, & the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case. But elsewhere we now add the s & the syllable. Mertens' might be appropiate if two people named Merten had collaborated. R. On Mon, 19 May 2003, Joshua Zelinsky wrote:
Hi Richard,
Carl Pomerance and Ivic have pointed out a few minor mistakes in my paper. First, I neglected to include the reference to where Ivic proved his improvement of the Erdos bounds: "The distribution of primitive abundant numbers." Studia Scien. Math. Hungarica 20(1985), 183-187. Second, where I wrote "Merten's Theorem", that should be "Mertens' Theorem." Third, Pomerance has alerted me that he had already produced a similar heuristic argument for the non-existence of odd perfect numbers which he presented at a lecture at Berkeley in 2000. Thus, the claim that the paper presents the first such heuristic is inaccurate.
Regards, Josh Z
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This rule on the formation of singular possessive's for words ending in 's' is the very first rule in Strunk's Elements of Style, and it agrees with RKG. EB White attributes to Strunk the additional recommendation "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! Why compound ignorance with inaudibility?" Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Guy" <rkg@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> To: "Joshua Zelinsky" <lord_bern@hotmail.com> Cc: "Math Fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 4:20 PM Subject: [math-fun] Re: your mail
It may seem clumsy, but I write and pronounce Mertens's, Jones's, Gauss's, Menelaus's, Pythagoras's, etc.
Fowler, writing around WW1, said `It was FORMERLY [my stress] customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s. In verse, & in reverential contexts, this custom is retained, & the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case. But elsewhere we now add the s & the syllable.
Mertens' might be appropiate if two people named Merten had collaborated. R.
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Joshua Zelinsky wrote:
Hi Richard,
Carl Pomerance and Ivic have pointed out a few minor mistakes in my paper. First, I neglected to include the reference to where Ivic proved his improvement of the Erdos bounds: "The distribution of primitive abundant numbers." Studia Scien. Math. Hungarica 20(1985), 183-187. Second, where I wrote "Merten's Theorem", that should be "Mertens' Theorem." Third, Pomerance has alerted me that he had already produced a similar heuristic argument for the non-existence of odd perfect numbers which he presented at a lecture at Berkeley in 2000. Thus, the claim that the paper presents the first such heuristic is inaccurate.
Regards, Josh Z
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possessive's ACK Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thane Plambeck" <thane@best.com> To: "math-fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 4:32 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Re: your mail
This rule on the formation of singular possessive's for words ending in 's' is the very first rule in Strunk's Elements of Style, and it agrees with RKG.
EB White attributes to Strunk the additional recommendation
"If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! Why compound ignorance with inaudibility?"
Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Guy" <rkg@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> To: "Joshua Zelinsky" <lord_bern@hotmail.com> Cc: "Math Fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 4:20 PM Subject: [math-fun] Re: your mail
It may seem clumsy, but I write and pronounce Mertens's, Jones's, Gauss's, Menelaus's, Pythagoras's, etc.
Fowler, writing around WW1, said `It was FORMERLY [my stress] customary, when a word ended in -s, to write its possessive with an apostrophe but no additional s. In verse, & in reverential contexts, this custom is retained, & the number of syllables is the same as in the subjective case. But elsewhere we now add the s & the syllable.
Mertens' might be appropiate if two people named Merten had collaborated. R.
On Mon, 19 May 2003, Joshua Zelinsky wrote:
Hi Richard,
Carl Pomerance and Ivic have pointed out a few minor mistakes in my paper. First, I neglected to include the reference to where Ivic proved his improvement of the Erdos bounds: "The distribution of primitive abundant numbers." Studia Scien. Math. Hungarica 20(1985), 183-187. Second, where I wrote "Merten's Theorem", that should be "Mertens' Theorem." Third, Pomerance has alerted me that he had already produced a similar heuristic argument for the non-existence of odd perfect numbers which he presented at a lecture at Berkeley in 2000. Thus, the claim that the paper presents the first such heuristic is inaccurate.
Regards, Josh Z
_________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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participants (2)
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Richard Guy -
Thane Plambeck