Talk:Black drop effect

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I don't want an edit war. But check out apostrophe and indeed the following quote from the from the apostrophe protection society:


  1. They are used to denote a missing letter or letters, for example:
    1. I can't instead of I cannot
    2. I don't instead of I do not
    3. it's instead of it is
  2. They are used to denote possession, for example:
    1. the dog's bone
    2. the company's logo
    3. Jones's bakery (but Joneses' bakery if owned by more than one Jones)

and indeed the following quote from the Oxford English Dictionary

The sign (') used to indicate the omission of a letter or letters, as in o'er, thro', can't; and as a sign of the modern English genitive or possessive case, as in boy's, boys', men's, conscience', Moses'. In the latter case, it originally marked merely the omission of e in writing, as in fox's, James's, and was equally common in the nominative plural, esp. of proper names and foreign words (as folio's = folioes); it was gradually disused in the latter, and extended to all possessives, even where e had not been previously written, as in man's, children's, conscience' sake. This was not yet established in 1725.

(quote from sense 2 of apostrophe)

If you have better authority than the above, I'd love to hear it!

To quote wiki's own Apostrophe (mark):
If a name already ends with an s, the extra s is sometimes dropped: Jesus' parables. This is more common in U.S. usage and with classical names (Eros' statue, Herodotus' book). Additionally, many contemporary names that end with -es (a -z sound) will see the extra s dropped by some writers: Charles' car, though most style guides advocate Charles's car. Some authors also extend the rule to words ending in -x or -z.
So both are right, although purists and classicists prefer dropping the extra s after an ending s. It just looks better written "Venus'" than "Venus's".
Urhixidur 19:44, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)


Hi again

this looks like a transatlantic difference (cf tomato vs tomato ;-) which just cannot admit a "correct" solution. There is, of course, no such thing as a definitively correct answer; a straightforward vote would result in greengrocers' punctuation becoming the defacto standard.

I just can't help inferring that there must be more than one Venus when I see "Venus' appearance" or similar...OTOH, maybe planets are a well-established group of exceptions along with Euripedes, Bayes, goodness, and (perhaps) United States.

best wishes

Robinh 21:42, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Due to the Earth's turbulent atmosphere ???

Why appearance of Venus respectively it's shadow is changed only near the edge of the Sun and why only at one side. 84.169.210.197 09:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Optical effect?

The explanation that "it is now thought by many to be an optical effect" doesn't seem to add much value. Anything that can be seen at all is in some sense an "optical effect". Does it mean "optical illusion"? Some sort of aberration in the optics of telescopes? Or what? Matt 00:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC).