Who Can Call A Meeting?

[Gary c Tesser]

Well, that's what you get for trying to combine "geranium against the wall", "dash of cold water in the face", and ";bylaws's" (what is that orthographic monstrosity?) into the same paragraph.

I myself don't see any of that amounting to "stubborn arrogance or contempt" (AHD. which I think you yourself got a copy of because I got mine from a second-hand used dictionary salesman who continually, intransigently, undercut my price) MIxing metaphors, well goodness gracious. But further: I've always thought of the convention of dropping the appropriate "s" after the plural of a possessive as likely a senseless, capricious artifice, initiated from whole cloth by a self-important pedant who takes it upon himself to write a grammar book, which unaccountably is seized upon by the slavish gentry critics and immediately becomes canon. As often happened, a lot in the mid-1800's, when a lot of English clergymen had a lot of free time on their hands because social, economic, and ecumenical developments had suddenly diminished their capacity to tell pontifcally (ouch), to dictate to people (their "flocks") what do do, some of them went to writing grammar books, and often supplementing their lofty ideal of preaching to the multitude with a desperately needed way to pay the rent, which incorporated the knowledge and wisdom of that day along with some of the writers's (I'm making a point here!) prejudices, caprices, and whimsical intent to make people do something just to watch people do something pointless and senseless just because these these self-appointed arbiters decided that the people should comply with what these writers wrote. Notwithstanding that it's been obvious to any schoolchild, then and now and in between, or rational person either, that the logical, and aesthetically proper, way to write the possessive of a plural should be for no reason different from the way to do it with a singular. But some pedant some decades ago told us to drop the second "s" the one after the apostrophe, the one that makes sense of the word unless we believe this otherwise-unemployed writer that suddenly that apostrophe, until now a mere diacritical mark, has suddenly by the grace of God (these writers were mostly underpaid pastors, remember) achieved active meaning in the sentence.* So that the "s" in "'s," is suddenly dispensable; superfluous; actively unwanted. One might ask, so if that's the case, why not drop ALL the "s's" in possessives? When talking of a truck belonging to Hank, why not write Hank' <pants truck>? When the Defense Department issues a pronouncement, why not write of the Defense Department' pronouncement?

Because we're so elegant about the s's at the ends of the word? C'mon! Defy the authorities! Attica! Attica!

This is personal to me because of a lesson I learned in the third grade, or maybe second. I was in class and we had a spelling test. One of the words we students were asked of was the non-color <shade> between white and black. Now, earlier in the week, I had been reading a book by an English writer. The copy I was reading was not shipped from overseas; I remember the publisher was American, likely as not Scholastic Book Services of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. And while I'm pretty sure that if words like "color" had been spelled in the book with a "u," i would have stood out in my mind; but it did not. Nevertheless, I'm sure that I read in more than one place the word asked for in that spelling test, and in the book it had been spelled "grey."

So I wrote that the word is spelled "grey."

And when the results came back, I was marked wrong on that spelling.

So I objected.

And I produced my book, in which the word appeared, as evidence.

And my protest was sloughed off dismissively -- to say "contemptuously" would mean that the "teacher" had shown more credit and respect than she did.

So I went to my mommy, who in some Pollyannish views should be expected to be supportive and nurturing of her child.

And I was told to listen to my teacher.

(-- Implying, look, humans <children>: your own brains, your minds, are worthless. Disregard what they tell you.)

Moral: Distrust authority. Question authority. I toy with, Disrespect authority.

(One exception: the military. When the sergeant screams, "Hit the dirt!" then please, do hit the dirt.)

So no. I assert that the proper spelling of "bylaws's" is just that, and similarly with all other words of the same construction; that this is not a monstrosity, but a breath-of-fresh-air correction, and that the evanescent contemporary convention that it should be dumped (dropping the essential "s" at the end because the word is cuter without it), is itself an unjustifiable perversity.

(For the love of God, Montresor, will someone in the "Calm Down Gary" club weigh in.)

______________

* I forget the technical term here. Semantic, generative, dative, grammatical, or something. The sentence would be better if I put the right word there. But man, a tough week.

 

 

[A year and a half later: I'm citing this rant, so I've cleaned up some of the typo'ed messes.  Corrections in angle brackets when necessary.  -- GcT]

Edited January 22, 2014 at 11:08 PM by Gary c Tesser

[Gary c Tesser]

(I guess if Guest-Edgar has his way, a expressed a day or so, I'd owe the website about $18 by now.)

[David A Foulkes]

(For the love of God, Montresor, will someone in the "Calm Down Gary" club weigh in.)

Sure, if you'd just stop and take a breath......

[Gary c Tesser]

(There's too much to correct in my rant of yesterday, post 26, so just a couple of essentials.

(1. "AJD" was s typo for "AHD," the American Heritage Dictionary.

(2. My apologies to Guest...George for perhaps hijacking his thread.

(3. The primary, unless only essential, thing for a writer to do is be interesting. So to any who found my eruption to be uninteresting after bothering to read it, I do apologize.)

 

[A year and a half later ... I have fixed some of the errors. -- GcT]

Edited January 22, 2014 at 11:09 PM by Gary c Tesser

[Louise]

(3. The primary, unless only essential, thing for a writer to do is be interesting. So to any who found my eruption to be uninteresting after bothering to read it, I do apologize.)

While I completely disagree with your punctuation argument(s), I still found your post entertaining...and um...creative (historically speaking).

[Guest Philip Kinty]

I was recently voted to be the President of a local coop with 140 units. After all directors were chosen I called for a Board Meeting to be held in 7 days. Later the secretary calls a separate meeting 2 days before the accepted date ostensibly to get the feet on the ground running. ‘Why waste any more time’. With or without me. He needs 4 to make a quorum which he requests. Can he unilaterally call a meeting without running it through the President?

[Guest Puzzling]

34 minutes ago, Guest Philip Kinty said:

I was recently voted to be the President of a local coop with 140 units. After all directors were chosen I called for a Board Meeting to be held in 7 days. Later the secretary calls a separate meeting 2 days before the accepted date ostensibly to get the feet on the ground running. ‘Why waste any more time’. With or without me. He needs 4 to make a quorum which he requests. Can he unilaterally call a meeting without running it through the President?

Please repost your question as a new topic.

Also it all depends on what your bylaws prescribe (please quote, do not paraphrase)