- Where did Im Jonesing get its meaning from?
Slang dictionary coverage of 'jones' J E Lighter, Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) traces the slang term jones as a noun to 1962 and as a verb to 1974: jones n {fr Jones, common family name; semantic devel unkn } Orig Black E 1 Narc a a drug addiction, esp to heroin
- How does one write the name of a married female and spouse in a list of . . .
Mrs Jane Smith (née Jones) Mrs Cynthia Corning (née Stratton-Longbottom) Etc I'm not sure whether 'Mrs' or 'Ms' is preferred when the context clearly shows that the lady is married I'm old-fashioned enough to think it should be 'Mrs', but modern style might use 'Ms' The referenced URL did not place brackets around the maiden name
- apostrophe - The Joness, Joneses, or Jones? - English Language . . .
@tunny this may depend on your regional preferences I have heard many people say (phonetic) "Mr Jones ornamant" where they don't add an "ez" to Jones when making it possessive in speach The writing of Mr Jones' indicates possessive but no spoken ez I have also heard other people who will say (phonetic) "The Jonesesez ornament" or "The
- Joness or Jones? - English Language Usage Stack Exchange
So: "Jones's" and "Horowitz's" but "the Joneses' house" and "the Horowitzes' house" (because they already have the fricative plural ending--which is not the case for "children's" or "mice's", where the s possessive is added to a plural noun)
- grammatical number - What is the proper title abbreviation for . . .
Dear Messrs Jones, Smith, Bloggs, and Flintstone The abbreviation for addressing more than one Ms is either "Mses "or "Mss "; note that the abbreviation "Mmes " (from the French "mesdames") is used for the pural of "Mrs " If it's mixed between two genders, use the appropriate honorific for each set and join them with "and" So for instance:
- punctuation - Is the correct format Good morning, John or Good . . .
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- grammaticality - How to address an entire family in a letter? - English . . .
There is a case to be made for parallelism We use Dear Mr Jones, Dear Mrs Jones, Dear Messrs Green, Dear Dr Tyler, putting the honorific or title before the surname Using the same construction, I have seen, and occasionally use, the parallel usage Dear Family Smith
- Apostrophe s or ss - English Language Usage Stack Exchange
On the use of so-called 'zero genitive', marked by a simple apostrophe in spelling ('), as opposed to the 's genitive, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik specify in A Comprehensive grammar of the English Language (pp 320 321) that:
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