Monday, February 21, 2011

Presidents/President's/Presidents' Day...which is it?


I suppose there are larger, more important things to ponder, if you're one of the lucky federal, state or bank employees who have the day off today, in honor of our presidents.  But after I posted the last posting on President's Day, I started thinking, "Did I just misspell the holiday?  Where does the apostrophe go?  Or IS there an apostrophe?"  We have the good fortune of living in an age when our semantic questions and their answers are a mere click away.  Not this time...things got even more confusing, as it seems the three different spellings were just about evenly split in thirds (with "apostrophe before the 's'" in a small lead).  I had the thought that I'd go with whatever spelling the Washington Post uses...but I see that they have used both the apostrophe spellings--before and after the 's'.  Hence, I'm going to stick with my original instinct and say (to the lucky federal, state and bank employees--seemingly the only ones who celebrate this day, since it means that they are sitting home watching "The Price Is Right" now), "HAPPY PRESIDENT'S DAY!" (that's me, above, with Bob Barker, in 1994...yes, I was on "The Price is Right"! I won a load of crap I had to pay taxes on that I didn't even want!  A roll-top desk?  A microwave range? A 'grandmother clock'?  And I wanted A NEW CAR!!).

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