Semicolons, Howevers, and Compound Sentences

For some people, a semicolon is just a wink before a smile. Know what I mean? ;)

And for others, a compound sentence is just a slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am affair in which you cram two sentences together to make one, and hope to Gawd you used the right punctuation. Which you probably didn't.

Okay, so, two sentences: The bear went over the mountain. He forgot his glasses, so he couldn't see a thing.

If we want to make these two sentences one, we just slap a comma and a conjunction here and there, and voila! A compound sentence, right?

The bear went over the mountain, however, he forgot his glasses, so he couldn't see a thing.

bzzzzzzzz! WRONG-G-G-G!

The problem is twofold: (1) however isn't a conjunction (not in this sentence, anyway), and (2) a conjunction wouldn't need a comma after it (not in this etc.).

However, as used in this sentence, is an adverb. That means it modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. In this case, it's modifying "forgot"--a verb. (Hey, bear with me.). But grammatically speaking, it could modify "went":

The bear went over the mountain, however. And, However, he forgot his glasses.

See? Each makes sense as a sentence. The thing is, an adverb only gets to modify one word or phrase in a sentence. If you have an adverb doing double duty, you know you've screwed up.

Here's a correct use of a conjunction:

The bear went over the mountain, but he forgot his glasses. (And I'm gonna forget the rest of that silly sentence).

But is a conjunction. It shows contrasting ideas. It doesn't need a comma after it (unless there's a separate clause between but and the subject of the sentence, which is "he", but let's keep this as simple as possible, okay?). So if we want to use however, we need a conjunction, right?

bzzzzzz!

What we need is a good ol' semicolon. A semicolon performs the same function as a conjunction, in this sentence, anyway, as I seem to love to say. Check it out:

The bear went over the mountain; however, he forgot his glasses.

There! Two sentences joined at the hip by a semicolon. Everybody's grammatically happy, punctuationally ditto, and our poor adverb isn't trying to work a double shift.

By the way, a good way to spot an adverb is to try using it in other parts of the sentence. If it still makes sense, it's probably an adverb:

However, he forgot his glasses. He forgot his glasses, however. He forgot, however, his glasses. <---(okay, that last one was a little silly).

Try doing that with but, and you'll see the difference.

Apostrophes (but not apostrophe's!) and plurals

We all know what a plural is, right? It's when there's more than one of something, right? And what do we do to make a plural? We add an s (or an -es, in the case of words that end with an s) to the word we're pluralizing, right? So what's up with this sentence?

As she collected response's to her personal ad, she learned to share her experience's and conflicting emotion's.

Yeesh -- why the apostrophes? We're talking about more than one response, more than one experience, and more than one emotion. Those are plurals. Does the rule say anything about adding an apostrophe with the s? No! So why do so many people do that?

I don't know. I used to think it was because they were dumb. After all, Miz Finkelstein pounded the "plural rule" into our heads in the fourth grade, and we got similarly pounded every year after that. So I figured the apostrophizers must have been smoking the cheap stuff before Miz F's class, and it permanently addled their brains.

I don't think that way anymore. I've seen too many smart people -- hell, even writers! -- who goof all the time. I get a newsletter from a professional writer (whose name shall remain a mystery, even to me, because she uses a pseudonym). It's riddled with apostrophe goofs! And somebody pays her to write! I guess she gives her proofreader the day off when she puts out the newsletter. And I have a good friend who's probably smarter than me (we won't tell her though, will we?) who does it as well. So I don't know why it happens. All I know is this:

An apostrophe denotes (1) possession (The dog's tail. Fred's hairpiece. Cheney's disappearing act) or (2) contraction (I can't, you won't, George shouldn't). If there's more than one dog, or, heaven help us, more than one Cheney, It's dogs and Cheneys. If you want to talk about the tails of dogs, talk about dogs' (or, even more traditionally, "dogs's) tails, not dog's' tail's.

Acronyms are the exception (ICBM's, not ICBMs), as is the pronoun "its" (the dog's tail is "its" tail, not "it's" tail -- "it's" is a contraction of "it is").

I hope that clarify's thing's. :)