Burn's Night or Burns' Night - or maybe just Burns Night??
As yesterday was Burn's Night, I released two new Scottish designs, giving my NoBooksNews subscribers early access to them.
A few hours later, this happened:
YASSSS, I thought to myself, I LOVE stuff like this - EDUCATE ME BABY!
Honestly, I feel that most of my grammar/spelling/punctuation learning happened in primary 4. I had a teacher who terrified the whole school. She was known for hitting kids, too, and was so fearsome, I recall more than one pupil wetting themselves in terror, when she addressed them. I loved her. I still see her clearly, in my mind's eye, and can hear her voice spitting the correct way to write things. Some legacy, 35 or so years later! But I don't remember her ever spitting "BURNS" at us.
My next big learning curve for this kind of thing, was really in the infancy of social media. Text Talk had finally fallen by the wayside, and we were back to proper words and sentences. Nothing like having an argument with a keyboard warrior, to have your grammar/spelling/punctuation corrected, eh!? hahaha
There's loads of words that I have a mind block with. And sometimes a google or dictionary check doesn't really solve it, so mostly I just choose a different word instead :P But I do remember being told, in no uncertain terms, that the Burn's apostrophe belongs where I put it. Cos I used to put it at the end (Burns'), thinking that made it possessive, or something? So yeah, ALWAYS completely open to being corrected and educated, in the hope the correct way finally sticks in my brain!
So, I excitedly awaited the reply! Which never came :'( Alas, the person had unsubscribed from NoBooksNews. Possibly in disgust at my punctuation. So probably never even received my reply :'(
So, I turned to social media - social media know everything, yeah?!
Well, this is the next morning, and the poll is still running, but I'd say I'm not the only one who struggles with this hahaha And I woke up to a slew of inbox messages, with people confidently stating that option A or B were correct....and then following up with "actually, I've no f*cking idea, I can't find a definitive answer either" hahahaha Just for a plot twist, one person, having spent altogether too long, not sleeping, at 4am, researched, and came to the conclusion that "Burns" may actually be more correct than either option!
Who the hell knows?!
But man, I LOVE the English language, and I LOVE the online community for learning!
If you'd like to be the first to hear about new designs, and the first to see my shite spelling, be sure to sign up below, for NoBooksNews!