HPR2596: Battling with English - part 2

Battling with English - part 2

Further notes about 'then' and 'than'

In the last episode I mentioned the confusion between then and than. I referred to the etymology of the two words, but I didn't go into detail.

Reading the Online Etymology Dictionary, one interesting point in the page about than is that it was:

Developed from the adverb then, and not distinguished from it by spelling until c. 1700.

So, it would seem that the two words are related and historically were the same! However, I'd guess that it is unlikely that people using them interchangeably now are making reference to usage in the 1700's.

Problems with apostrophes

Let us now examine the apostrophe, which is a punctuation mark. It is used for:

• Indicating that letters have been omitted, such as in a contracted form of words. For example when the phrase they are is contracted to they're.

• Turning a word into a possessive form such as in the cat's paw

• When the plural of a single letter (or digit) is required such as in dot your i's and cross your t's.

There are other uses but you can look at the Wikipedia article for them if you want to dig deeper. I may well revisit this topic in a later show in this series.

Long notes

I have provided detailed notes as usual, and these can be viewed here.

Links

• Apostrophe
  • Wikipedia page: Apostrophe
  • Cambridge Dictionary: Possession
• Grammar Girl's items on apostrophes:
  • Apostrophe Catastrophe (Part One)
  • Apostrophe Catastrophe (Part Two)
• Oxford Dictionaries: Definition of 'cant'
• Grammar Monster:
  • Using Apostrophes
  • Plural of amoeba
• Grammarbook.com:
  • Its vs It's
• Previous episode in this series:
  • Battling with English - part 1

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