Doomguts

[spacelem]

This might have been a Facebook thing, but FB seem determined to drive away their users right now

Comments

[spacelem]

Ooh, I never thought of that. Could be, and apparently they can be triggered by eating certain foods.

The foods that I remember eating before having the pain were really cheap noodles, salty cashew nuts, some extremely salt & vinegary peanuts, a jalapeño burger, and yesterday I had some coffee with Nestle's coffee mate in it (sorry, I needed coffee, the maths common room was closed due to a floor being placed, and the woman opposite me had coffee mate). Having said that, I had a slightly sore stomach two days ago, after I hadn't eaten much.

[spacelem]

I'll get an appointment sometime soon. I'm not particularly keen on going through this again :P

[skullculture]

I care about grammar, but something is bothering me. When you say "a night's sleep", or "three week's holiday" or "a few hours time", is there an apostrophe there or not? If so, does it go before or after the s?

I think the construction is possessive, ie. "the amount of time belonging to a night".

In which case it's:

a night’s sleep (singular possessive)
three weeks’ holiday (plural possessive)
a few hours’ time (plural possessive).

Having said that, the second and third ones look wrong to me. I think they're right, but they look wrong.

[spacelem]

Thanks -- that's what I was going with too. I know what you mean though, it still doesn't quite feel right.

[viking42]

No matter whether it feels right, it is correct.

This page might be helpful: http://www.eng-lang.co.uk/apostrophe_rules.htm

[spacelem]

Aha! There was an actual example of what I was looking for there.

Most of the time it's not too difficult to figure out if something is correct or not, but I thought that this was a somewhat unusual construction, so couldn't rely on intuition.

[entropic_angel]

I second the opinion of get yourself to a doctors. Hope you continue to be well.