So it is with Arkansas'. The missing
s is a silent tribute to this state's mule-stubborn
independence where language (and so much else) is concerned. It lets you
know where you are. Welcome to the frontier, pilgrim.
I still have a little coffee table, a souvenir of the time when Danish
Modern was all the rage, with a neat, professional saw cut in it, a reminder
of my carpentry skills when I was helping the boy - who now has two boys of
his own - build a racer for the Soapbox Derby. I was chagrined when it
happened, but I wouldn't trade that cut in the table for anything now. It's
acquired a sentimental value. That's how I've come to feel about that final,
absent s in Arkansas' Newspaper.
But I was grateful to Judge Arnold for raising this question still again.
Such disputes give us inky wretches something to argue about when lesser
issues grow tiresome, like world peace or the future of Western
Civilization, such as it is.
Happily, this debate over the correct placement of the apostrophe is
inexhaustible, mainly because there is no universally accepted way of
spelling the possessive of Arkansas, or about using the apostrophe in
general.
To quote the Oxford Companion to English Literature, "There never was a
golden age in which the rules for the possessive apostrophe were clear-cut
and known and understood and followed by most educated people."
This free-for-all goes a long way back. And may have a long run ahead of it,
breaking out in schools, newspapers, libraries, at the family dinner table
and now in the Legislature, all to no clear end. This debate surely is To Be
Continued. Which should be educational. And fun. Not a minor achievement for
one little ol' punctuation mark. How 'bout them apostrophes! |