Fighting the inevitable absorption of double vowels

Though amoeba has clearly lost to ameba, and anaesthesia is in a similar state, and hardly anyone on this side of the Atlantic spells it encyclopaedia anymore ...

They'll have to pry the second 'a' in 'archaeology' out of my cold, dead hands. I've seen people trying it. They should stop. Really.

The day that Archaeology Magazine drops it, I will. Not a moment before.

Wordsworthy

I've notice a recent upsurge in the use of -worthy as a superlative suffix. A local radio station - The Buzz - refers to music as being "buzzworthy". Too many additional examples to even mention here. (And how the heck do you Google for words with particular suffixes? Anyone heard of Google working in a substring search? But that's for another time ...)

I believe that this is a direct result of the popularity of Seinfeld and the word "spongeworthy": from brainyencyclopedia.com:

spongeworthy - that a potential sexual partner is particularly attractive; in the original episodes, being "spongeworthy" meant Elaine was willing to use one of her limited supply of (no longer produced) contraceptive sponges with this person.

I'd love to be able to trace the development of word usage using daily Google statistics -- but most of what I'm interested in (other than entirely new phrases like "jump the shark") are trends in things like punctuation and usage that are difficult to Google.

Of course, every time I think "Hmm, Google would be cooler if ...", they've usually got it on Google Labs before I can finish the sentence. :)

On the Use of the Apostrophe

In my observation of apostrophe use, I've finally hit upon the new rule:

If the basic word doesn't come with an S, use an apostrophe to set it off.

I believe that more and more of the "uneducated" appear to be gravitating towards this for a reason. It is in direct response to the relatively new crop of words for which it is hard to tell how to derive their possessive or plural forms. The two big drives for this are responses to foreign words, acronym-like words, and a tendency to print signs and other text in all-caps.

How do you pluralize "VCR"? OK, how about "TiVo"? What about "MTrSs"?

What? You've never seen the acronym "MTrSs" before? Is it plural or not? Can't tell, can you? What's a great way to be able to immediately tell what part of the word is the base, and what part is the pluralness or possessiveness? How about "MTrSs's" ?

Let's try a different one. You're familiar with burritos, the Greek god Thanatos, Cheerios, and potatoes. Let's stipulate the existence of an entirely unfamiliar word: "polgos". If you see this word without context, is it singular or plural? It's impossible to tell. If you see it as "polgo's", you automatically know. (Of course, I'm also seeing things like "Thanato's", which is an entirely different story ...)

In other words, it's now becoming easier to tell from context whether or not the word is possessive versus plural than it is to tell whether or not it came with an S.

Unfortunately, this means that some information is lost. If you're driving down the road and you see a sign that says "CARLOS RESTAURANT", does it mean:

• Carlos Restaurant


• Carlos' Restaurant


• Carlo's Restaurant
  

The answer is that it's starting to not matter, even though I would prefer it to be otherwise. I'm not sure how the new rule will develop to handle this type of word.

Now that I get it, apostrophe misuse isn't giving me a stroke every time I see it. What we're seeing is just a sign (pun intended) of people trying to grapple with changing linguistic needs. Calming down now. :)