From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2009-05-29T03:55:06+09:00
Subject: Re: death toll

On 28.05.2009 20:30, Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 28 May 2009, at 19:23, Roger Pack wrote:
>> Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:

>>> Notice that this is very bad typological style to print digits in
>>> these cases.  They should have spelled them out: "hundreds of
>>> africans, thousands of civil wars".
>> or at least written them as
>> 100's and 1000's
> 
> Except that would in principle be 'of the hundred' and 'of the  
> thousand' as using the numeric form isn't an abbreviation and so an  
> apostrophe before the s isn't appropriate for pluralisation. It is  
> however an increasingly widespread usage (thanks to the inability of  
> many people to use the apostrophe correctly).

The same happens over here in Germany, just the other way round: 
although German does not allow for an apostrophe when building a 
genitive you can see "Dietmar's Hotel" and like phrases with increasing 
frequency where "Dietmars Hotel" would have been correct.  In the end we 
will probably all speak some form of "English". :-)

Cheers

	robert


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