There is also a school of thought that only people can possess things, but it is not widely adhered to. We often hear/see "the home's ambience" where some would insist on "the ambience of the home".
Robert, I would say this "school of thought" needs to be educated
So only humans can possess things? What kind of anthropocentric nonsense is this? Are we now supposed to write, "The monkeys banana," and drop the apostrophe, because some pale intellectual who's never set foot in a jungle postulates that monkeys really "can't possess" bananas? Please
Oh, and as far as "the ambience of the home" goes, pick up a copy of Strunk and White's
Elements of Style, as these old curmudgeons would crack a ruler over your knuckles for suggesting anyone should write in the
passive voice. "The home's ambience" is better and more vigorous.
There is formal writing and speech, there is informal writing and speech, there is advertising, there are web forums, etc., it's impossible to come up with general rules.
I disagree with this effort to categorize various forms of laziness.
To my way of thinking, there is a much simpler way to categorize speaking and writing than trying to divide-up everything into arbitrary groups. It basically boils down to this: some people make an effort to speak and write correctly, while most people don't, and that's pretty much it. "Informal speech" is merely a term we use to describe our own laziness when we
don't try as hard to speak well as we would in a more formal setting. One should not try to dignify the sloppiness of informal speech by calling it "correct within its context"; rather, informal speech is merely the causal, sloppy speaking we do when we're not trying so hard to be formal.
Context is important, but in the OP's case, most people would insist on an apostrophe and so would I.
Agreed. A company advertising its own sloppiness and illiteracy isn't a good way to sell products or services.
Jack
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