writer's block
n. a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.
Writers' Bloc
n. a group of writers united for a particular purpose.
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Just a curious thought from over the past 24 hours or so... how many people here noticed my insistence on spelling it as Writers' with the apostrophe at the end of the word rather than between the "r" and the "s"?
It's such a nitpicky, retentive little thing about which to make a statement. Probably the majority of readers in the world wouldn't care one way or the other. So does it actually even matter?
If a single apostrophe can change the meaning of a sentence simply with its presence, then yes. Oftentimes the argument goes that "you'd understand what they meant from the context of the sentence," and more often than not this is true enough. But what about the other times?
Consider the language joke I used in last week's podcast post:
"The hostess called the guests' names."
In this example, the hostess is announcing the names of the guests to the party. However...
"The hostess called the guests names."
Without the apostrophe at the end of "guests", the hostess is now insulting the guests, calling them bad things like "big-nosed poopie-faces" or the like!
That's a huge difference in meaning from just a little curved bit of punctuation.
But yes, the context thing again. Surely the following sentence would answer the "which meaning would it have been?" question; the following lines would probably tell you whether the guests either sat down at the dinner table or if they got offended and flipped off the hostess or something.
But why make the reader have to think about that? Every time the reader needs to stop and think about what a writer really meant is another moment where the reading experience hiccups and maybe even grinds to a halt. And that's what happens with every spelling error, every grammatical mistake and every misplaced piece of punctuation is just another pothole in the road.
