{"id":5383,"date":"2026-05-14T03:38:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2026-05-14T03:38:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:38:58","slug":"its-not-half-a-word-its-a-possessive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5383","title":{"rendered":"It’s not half a word, it’s a possessive"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve done the bit<\/a> for years… President’s Day, Presidents’ Day, Washington-Lincoln Day… you get the idea. It’s funny because everyone is right and everyone is wrong all at the same time. I usually go with “Presidents’ Day,” although my own state–that would be Virginia–still calls it George Washington Day. (A hundred and sixty-one years after the Civil War, many people ’round these parts still don’t take too kindly to Mr. Lincoln.)<\/p>\n

Five years ago I noted<\/a> that officially Mother’s Day is spelled as such. The holiday’s founder, a Ms. Anna Jarvis really did codify it as such back in 1912. A singular possessive, celebrating one’s own mother.<\/p>\n

I’ve evolved on my opinion of farmers market. I used to write “farmers’ market,” but now I’m beyond thinking it’s any one farmer’s market, or a consortium of farmers that conduct a market. “Farmers” is simply an adjective modifying “market,” rendering the apostrophe unnecessary. (I’m usually the apostrophe apologist, yet here I am suggesting it vanish.)<\/p>\n

I think I’m going to start doing the same for Presidents Day. And dang I’d do the same for Mothers but for the aforementioned Ms. Jarvis.<\/p>\n

Could have saved us a lot of trouble a century later.<\/p>\n

Keep this in mind, everybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve done the bit for years… President’s Day, Presidents’ Day, Washington-Lincoln Day… you get the idea. It’s funny because everyone is right and everyone is wrong all at the same time. I usually go with “Presidents’ Day,” although my own … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5384,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions\/5384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}