Local what?

A story on FoxNews.com today includes a paragraph that begins: "Tattered and crumpled on the ground, the Mammoth Lakes local found what appears to be two FAA cards that listed the name Steve Fossett."

You've gotta admire the local who had the presence of mind to notice and identify the cards as he lay tattered and crumpled on the ground. But what I really want to know is what happened to the local that left him like that?

Apostrophes for plurals, an unnatural phenomenon

Our reporter Bill Bartleman provides another exception to the rule that apostrophes aren't used to show plural. In today's story on the Executive Inn, he includes this quote from hotel buyer Bill Parsons: "Everything is agreed to with Mr. Singh and the only work is for the attorneys to dot the i's and cross the t's." Writers should use apostrophes in plurals that would otherwise be confusing: "dot the is and cross the ts."

The sentence also illustrates an example of when it is not necessary to use a comma before a conjunction separating two independent clauses. Leaving it out does not alter the meaning. No one would read it to mean: "everything is agreed to with Mr. Singh, and everything is agreed to with the only work." I would still have included the comma, however, to prevent even a momentary bit of confusion, the sort that can slow a reader.

Apostrophe its

A letter writer, apparently aware that "it's" is the contraction for "it is" but also certain that a possessive calls for an apostrophe, just tagged one on the end in a construction like this: "The board made its' decision."

Remember, English is a language of exceptions. "Its" is an exception to the rule that a possessive requires an apostrophe.