Polite request 're posting style

It could be said to have been an abbreviation for so long that it has developed a life of its own!

PS - "its" as possession is the exception to my previous post, but "it's" as abbreviation for "it is" does have the ' for the omitted letters. The English language is full of such things!

The reason Gab54 it has been asked because some people have very poor eyesight and by doing as we have been asked it will help a great deal of people with a disability.

The use of full stops, comas etc will not help anyone, in fact it will put off people with a poor grasp of english and we should be inclusive.

Just think about other people.

I use re.
We all know what it means.

Yes. I will try to remember GabriellaG54

Bathsheba The whole word "in" is omitted in that phrase. Not sure if that gets the apostrophe or not. It is a minefield. In actual use, I wouldn't have used any apostrophe at all there, but the argument discussion was a theoretical one.

Ok - to return to the long paragraphs now, there are some posts currently on theforum by one poster which consist solely of large chunks copied and pasted from an article. One of them is 77 lines long and utterly boring, contributing nothing to the subject. I didn't read that either, or any of the other posts. That defeats the poster's purpose in repeating it all..

It's is also short for 'it has', as in, 'It's been raining.'

As I used to tell my (largely) Arabic-speaking students, if it doesn't mean 'it is' or 'it has', it doesn't need an apostrophe.

I do agree about paragraphs. I just don't read long posts with no paragraphs.

If a post is huge with no paras I start reading it - if it interests me I continue, if not I zone out.

Paragraphs are our friends I agree.

But I wouldn’t like to be prescriptive about it. I too notice grammatical errors, spelling mistakes but would never presume to point them out. We all have different strengths and weaknesses anyway.

I enjoy GN whatever forms it takes!

GabriellaG54 I already carried out the "polite request" because I want my posts to be read. I also use full stops and commas to break up sentences into digestable sections.

Even those with poor English are capable of benefitting from dividing up a post, as it is not always obvious which group of words belongs together and which is a separate thought. That is the job of the writer of a post - to try to make it obvious to everyone just what they mean. If they fail, misunderstanding and confusion follow.