Friday, November 11, 2011

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day.  I am old enough to remember when it was Armistice Day, a day recognizing the end of major hostilities in World War I.  A terrible war, with major loss of life.  Billed as "The war to end all wars."  How naive that sounds today.  Thus it is fitting that the holiday was expanded, in 1954, to include all Veterans.

Our thanks to all those who served, in both peace and war.

In typing the title to this post I wondered about where to place the apostrophe.  Punctuation is a subject with which I have trouble.  I went with none. In looking up the year the name changed I found this in Wikipedia:
The holiday is commonly printed as Veteran's Day or Veterans' Day in calendars and advertisements.  While these spellings are grammatically acceptable, the United States government has declared that the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling.
And, it makes sense, in that while this is the holiday that honors Veterans, it is a holiday that belongs to all of us, for the purpose of honoring those Vets.

Regards  —  Cliff
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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous11/11/2011 12:25:00 PM

    When did they change it? I grew up learning that it did have an apostrophe and while I see the reason to leave one out, the day belongs to the Veterans. We honor them on this day. It is something we celebrate in honor OF them. The day doesn't belong to me.

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  2. Dan M11/11/2011 01:04:00 PM

    Cliff,

    Thank you for your service.

    Dan

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  3. C R Krieger11/11/2011 06:00:00 PM

    Re Anon, I don't know.  There has been a shift from an historic event remembered and a group honored.

    Re Dan M—Thank you.

    Regards  —  Cliff

    ReplyDelete

Please be forthright, but please consider that this is not a barracks.