英语惯用法.ppt

More on English usage For BDCOL Students Plurality, Possessiveness, at al. It’s means “it is,” while its means “belongs to it.” Its’ is not a word at all. The exploding Titan hurled its warhead farther than CINCSAC would have liked. It’s easy to see how the F-15 got its nickname “Rodan.” The ABL program will be a fiasco unless its power problems can be solved. It’s only a lot of reading if you do it. Similarly, there is no apostrophe in the possessives theirs, ours, hers, or yours. Yours, Mine, and Ours is not my favorite movie, but it is hers. As usual, the error was theirs, but we were blamed for it. There’s a subtle perfection in everything I do. Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There’s no there there.” I guess she never came here. Data, media and criteria are plural words (though treating “data” as singular gets more common all the time and is widely accepted now; it’s so sad). One data point is a datum; television or sand painting is a medium, and one of a set of criteria is a criterion. These data are presented in an unnecessarily confusing way. Force protection should not be the only criterion for judging military success. Their promotion criteria seemed mainly to involve alcohol tolerance and family influence. In effect, Schelling said that with nuclear weapons, the medium is the message. The media have blown my role in the food fight completely out of proportion. Lt. Cdr. Data is a medium, but Lt. Worf is an extra large. More on plurals Plural nouns which end in “s” are made into possessive adjectives by adding an apostrophe. Singular nouns are normally made possessive by adding ’s, even if they already end in s (except for Jesus or ancient Greek or Roman names ending in -is or -es). He said he believed in states’ rights, but he was vague about what he meant by that. Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” became one of Elvis’s trademarks. The AWACS’s lack of defensive systems may be its Achilles’ heel. Miscellaneous Pet Peeves To beg