Never failing to get your message across?
 

Not about the apostrophe, but how about this for different meanings then?
Dear Mother,
In law, there is nothing to make me say thank you, but the quality of your gifts compels me at least to write to tell you how I feel. Thank you so much for the presents! I was expecting nothing more than a token yet, again, you have exceeded even your own incredible standards.
It was a shame you had to stay here for such a short time. I thought I might have coped, but it was unbearable seeing you leave. The relief was immense when I heard we might see you again soon. I wanted to end it all by saying goodbye now. I hope I will not have to say it to you again for a long time. If you have the opportunity to spend Christmas elsewhere next year, please do not.
Much love
Matthew


Dear Mother-in-Law,
There is nothing to make me say thank you, but the quality of your gifts compels me at least to write to tell you how I feel. Thank you? So much for the presents I was expecting. Nothing more than a token, yet again! You have exceeded even your own incredible standards.
It was a shame you had to stay here. For such a short time, I thought I might have coped, but it was unbearable. Seeing you leave, the relief was immense. When I heard we might see you again soon, I wanted to end it all. By saying goodbye now, I hope I will not have to say it to you again for a long time. If you have the opportunity to spend Christmas elsewhere next year, please do.
Not much love
Matthew
An example fromhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4583594.stm
:)
sw

Rotflol .

Very good, Safeware. And this is why the legal profession whittles its punctuation down to the bare minimum. Even though it makes for dull, cumbersome reading, it does limit the opportunities for misplaced punctuation to change the meaning of legal documents.

ISS for President. ;)

This reminds me of something a mate had to endure on a transport Sqn on the secret Oxfordshire airfield. He was the Sqn security officer and the Sqn had just lost a secret file. They had looked high and low, but it was obviously in the hands of the KGB. So he wrote a letter to OC Security Sqn admitting the problem and inviting him and his minions to visit the Sqn to investigate with their big box of latex gloves, and could they please bring some Vaseline to make the experience a little less unpleasant.
My mate shows the letter to his Flt Cdr and asks for his thoughts. Flt Cdr, reads it and starts shaking his head.
"I think we have a problem here. You've split an infinitive".
Now I heard of aircraft crashing for lack of a split pin, but never because of a split infinitive. This firm grasp on trivia from middle management was one of the reasonds I left the RAF. (Apart form the cr@p pay, too many dets and the fact I can't write that is!)

DW, yes I can see that to wrongly write a letter is trivially compared to the offence.

Some DW (Defence Writing) galls. I had a pilot boss at ISK, or rather he became my boss after we were sold down the river, who insisted on all letters to Group being signed off at an equivalent rank level. He couldn't see that this would stop the staish writing to the AOC.

Anyway he would only sign off letters he could understand. As he was not a Nimrod man, nor a weaponeer, that was not much. My ex-boss, now at Group, wondered why my letters were suddenly longer, incomrehensible, and signed off by a pilot. Naturally he replied to the signatory who As he was not a Nimrod man, nor a weaponeer, could not understand the replies.

OTOH its painful on the eye's with all these pokey little things like apostrophe's comma's. Beside's it's use adds lot's of extra keystrokes.:)

I thought ISS taught you only how to underline titles and number paragraphs. A competent level in English, as with Maths, was expected on joining.

I resent having to pick up poorly written prose as much as I resent receiving it - catch 22. I agree that content is far more important than the layout and I get just as annoyed by peeps who push out a correctly formatted, smart document, on time, then spend the next few days amending the content! However, if the content is lost due to some imaginative punctuation and confusing sentence structure, it is all wasted.

It boils down to this: Why take pride in what you write and not how you write it? Do you have pride in what you fly, but not how you fly it? Like most things in the service, English (or people's approach to it) gets knocked most by those who have to excuse their inabilities.

Happy Christmas

No, my ISS had, as its first block, a book on English usage. It was one where you read a pane, moved on and answered some questions and, if they were correct, moved on. If you got a section wrong, such as mis-identifying a subordinate clause, then you went back to an earlier pane that you had not previously covered and started over.

Beside SW (now DW) they made great play of the over adequate semi-colon, the adequate comma and the mis-related pronoun. Certainly the latter was an essential lesson.

For all that people may have bitched about ISS (and I didn't get an A), it gives a very sound grounding in writing in clear English that I think many would benefit from.

sw

Even M&S get it wrong
 

Even our so called top companies need a bit of tuition on the use of apostrophes :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6208295.stm

Maybe we could roll out ISS to civvy companies. It would make a change from them inflicting their products on us all the time.(ie JPA etc) :E