Please explain the correct manner of compounding the following adjectives: “Life-insurance company,” “fire insurance company,” “tornado insurance company.” I am under the impression that they should be used as written above, for this simple reason, namely: In the first instance it is possible to place an insurance upon your life, and therefore the two adjectives adhere and become compound. In the latter two cases it is different—you do not place insurance upon fire or tornado, but you insure against them, and you do not insure against life; therefore, in the last two instances, the two adjectives do not adhere directly and should not be used as compound adjectives. I would also like to inquire further, if either of the above is incorporated in the full name of an organization, should they in any such case be compounded?
If compounding occurs in any of the terms, it should in all, as they are exactly alike grammatically. Difference of meaning in the understood prepositions should not affect the forms. No compounding is really necessary, although the terms are compounds etymologically. If we tried to compound every term that could be reasonably joined in form no dividing line would ever be reached. Usage, especially in the names of corporations, is against compounding in these cases.
A large book is now in press (about 150 pages having been electrotyped). Throughout these pages the apostrophe and additional s were used in names ending with s, viz., Lewis’s, Parsons’s, Adams’s, etc. Proofs are now returned with final s deled, which fact leads the Autocrat of the Composing-room (the Chairman) to arise and assert that “while the practice may be correct, it is behind the times,” “all good enough fifty years ago,” “won’t go in good offices nowadays,” “never used in first-class work,” closing with the remark that he doesn’t see why it is not used in griffins’ [griffins’s] heads (!), Orphans’ [Orphans’s] Home (!), calmly ignoring the fact that in the first instance a common noun, plural, is used, and in the latter a proper noun, same number. The reader contends that the apostrophe and additional s as marked are correct, and refers to the Harper publications, Scribner’s, the Century, and the work of any good printing house. Who is right, or which is right (all questions of “style” aside)?
That Chairman evidently does not know the difference between singular and plural, or at least does not know the grammatical distinction of the forms, that has been just what it now is for more than fifty years. “Adams’s,” etc., are the right forms, beyond any possible reasonable objection; the only difficulty is that some people will not use the right forms, and have been so thoroughly drilled in the use of wrong forms that they insist that the wrong ones are right.
Please tell me what kind of mark (if any) should be placed after 4th, 21st, and like words used in a sentence where if the word were spelled out there would be no mark; as, “On the 21st of September.” My opinion is that the form is not an abbreviation. It certainly is a contraction, but nothing seems left out.
No mark should be used. The opinion that the form is not an abbreviation is a good opinion, because there is no abbreviating. Abbreviating is done by leaving off a part of the word, and it is commonly shown by using a period at the end of the short form; but some short forms, while they really are abbreviations, are not technically known as such, because they are quite properly included in another category, that of nicknames or merely short names. In this latter class are “Ed,” “Fred,” “Will,” etc. In the ordinal words of our question there is no cutting off from the end, but only substitution of a figure for the numeral part of the word, with the same ordinal termination that is used in the word when spelled out. How can anything “certainly” be a contraction when nothing seems left out? A contraction is a form made by leaving out a part from between the ends and drawing the ends together, commonly with an apostrophe in place of the omitted part, as in “dep’t” for “department”; but some real contractions are known as abbreviations by printers, because they are printed in the form of abbreviations, as “dept.,” which is often used instead of the other form. The dates with figures certainly are not contractions, as there is no omission, but mere substitution of a figure for the corresponding letters. Possibly the doubt arose from the fact that the Germans do make abbreviations of ordinal words by using a figure and a period, omitting the termination, as “21. September,” which shows plainly why the point is used.