Oolite Bulletins

To be honest, since the number of beginners is indeterminate, either Beginner’s or Beginners’ would be grammatically correct – but a quick check on Amazon revels that most books with similar titles tend to call themselves "A Beginner’s Guide". Probably because each copy is only read by one person at a time ...

Disembodied wrote:

Beginner’s or Beginners’

I see that I can rest assured that native english speakers also do trip over these things ...



L

Lestradae wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

Beginner’s or Beginners’

I see that I can rest assured that native english speakers also do trip over these things ...



L

In my personal experience, those who speak English as a second (or more) tongue often have a better grasp of grammar and punctuation (and sadly these days, spelling and vocabulary) than many native speakers do...

I have been told by my non-native English speaking students that English is very easy to learn to speak and write at a basic level but the nuances of the grammar drives them insane!!

As somebody who likes to write (you may have noticed ) and read when I find the time, I generally come across something new about my own language every single day.

Having been a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, the hardest thing I've found to explain is how to pronounce "ough".
There are seven ways (although some people will say eight).

BTW, I had to stay out of the "apostrophe" discussion as it can be as infinite as the Universe.

And so the "apostrophe" wars begin ...

There's got to be an area on a Galactic chart somewhere that fits that!

a clarification is in order:

Since only if you wrote it as "A Guide for Beginner's" would you assume that some-one called Beginner had this guide.

no, you would assume that the guide is intended for something undefined belonging to Beginner. Not intended for Beginner at all.

I can relate to this guy (but not his choice of facial hair) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... signs.html

for what it's worth, I side with THGTTG. It feels more cosy and personal when it's the Beginner's guide. I imagine the gentle beginner cosseted in a high-backed armchair sat by a roaring hearth on a cold winter's evening, a soothing cup of camomile tea to hand whilst the secrets of the Ooniverse are lovingly set out. The Beginners' guide is more like 300 newbies in an anonymous lecture theatre being talked at by a lacklustre academic, apathetically regurgitating the contents of out-of-date slides.

See that over there in the distance?

Yes

Well, that's where this thread used to live. Lots of pretty pictures I seem to recall. Not like now, not these dead and dying punctuation marks lying everywhere...

touche!

I also like the screenshot's more than the apostrophe's

A screenshot, upcoming ...

I call this pic "Death of a Tiger" or also "Frakkin' with the wrong people". It shows the final moments of my trusty Tiger Mk I when trying to stop a bunch of carrier-owning uber-pirates. I just couldn't resist trying nevertheless!

Beginner's vs. Beginners':

<disclaimer>I'm sorry to post this now, but actually the following would have been the first comment after Stargazer's; only that my internet connection died for mysterious reasons after I loaded the "Post a reply" screen.

<further derailment>I followed also DH's mournings about his crappy internet connection and am happy that the problem seems to have been resolved. But where I live, sudden and inexplicable connection cuts, lasting between a couple of minutes and a couple of hours, are a very common phenomenon (for "common" read: several times a day). The reasons range from: the cleaning lady accidentally pulled the wireless router's a/c plug in the neighbouring office, over: a secretary accidentally pulled the satellite modem's a/c plug in another office, or: the satellite dish turned as couple of degrees during the last rainstorm, to: there may be some problem at the other end of the satellite connection, which these days is not in Kenya anymore, but in South Africa, so I'll never find out what the problem was.

Somehow you learn to live with it. The alternative would be going mad. (Which sometimes may happen, especially if the connection dies while you are in the middle of one of these OS- or firmware updates where you have this fat "Make sure that your computer is connected to the internet all the time until this update is finished!"-message sitting on your screen. </further derailment></disclaimer>

I'd say that depends very much on whether you have the individual reader or the whole group of potential customers in mind.

Although I would guess that there is probably some convention about this in the English style manual.

(In German, we would use the plural in the title, but perhaps only because the singular would require the insertion of an extra article: "Ooniversum für Anfänger" vs. "Ooniversum für den Anfänger"; the former would be considered more elegant).

El Viejo wrote:

There's got to be an area on a Galactic chart somewhere that fits that!

O.O
<.<
>.>
-.-
no.
^.^

Lestradae wrote:

A screenshot, upcoming ...

I call this pic "Death of a Tiger" or also "Frakkin' with the wrong people". It shows the final moments of my trusty Tiger Mk I when trying to stop a bunch of carrier-owning uber-pirates. I just couldn't resist trying nevertheless!

I'd do a custom and slap some turrets on. Those pirates are getting all snuggly. Time to show them in on uncertain terms that you little lady intends to remain chaste.