A Word, Please:

I have bad netiquette. Every week this column ends with information on how to write to me. And, every six to 12 weeks, I get around to checking my e-mail.

It’s rude and schmuck-like. But there’s an upside: By the time I finally check my e-mail, there’s a lot of good stuff in there — often including questions and comments from readers that make interesting topics for new columns. I feel kind of bad milking subject matter from people I treated so rudely. But the readers do bring up issues others might like to hear about.

Here are some of the interesting issues that have come up recently and not so recently in the old mail bag.

Mary in Glendale asked about people who use “absolutely” as a synonym for “yes,” as in: Will you be there? Absolutely!

When you consider whether “absolutely” can be a synonym for “yes,” it taxes the brain. But there are other ways to look at it. We answer questions with all kinds of words, including other -ly adverbs. “Certainly” comes to mind. We also use words like “affirmative” and “sure.”

So can you use “absolutely” in place of “yes”? Absolutely.

Lisa in Glendale wrote about possessives of words ending in S: “I constantly see on TV, billboards and in print the possessive being misspelled,” she wrote. “According to Strunk & White’s ‘The Elements of Style,’ even if a name ends in S, like the name Charles or Travis, it should be written as ‘Charles’s pencil/Travis’s pencil.’ Yet I forever am seeing it written as ‘Debbie Travis’ painted house.’ Isn’t this wrong?”

I hate having to tell people this: The wrong here is putting too much faith in Strunk and White.

“The Elements of Style” isn’t a universal style guide. It was written for one professor’s students to refer to when writing papers for his Cornell class a century ago. The “rules” Strunk laid out applied to his classroom, not to the world. When some clever publishers realized the market for the type of information printed in Strunk’s guide, they began to market it in a way I consider deceptive.

The two most authoritative style guides, AP and Chicago, disagree with Strunk — and with each other — on how to form possessives of words ending in S.

Per the “Chicago Manual of Style” it’s James’s words, James’ sake and James’s seat. Per the “Associated Press Stylebook” it’s James’ words, James’ sake and James’ seat, but AP’s rules change for the boss’s words, the boss’ sake and the boss’ seat.

Strunk and White say it’s James’s words, James’s sake and James’s seat. But they spell out special rules, not enforced by other major style guides, for ancient names like Jesus.

Who’s right? Who’s to say? The point is the two style guides followed by perhaps 99% of the professional editors in the country aren’t wrong just because a long-dead Cornell professor told his students to do something differently.

Finally, Sherry in Madison, Wis., asked whether a news reporter was wrong to say that a number of people “showed up to” an event. As Theodore Bernstein notes in “The Careful Writer,” there is no reference guide, nor is there a grammar rule, to tell us which preposition to use in every construction.

Sometimes dictionaries will offer examples that reveal their preferences. But, looking up “show,” I don’t see an example of “show up at” or “show up to.” All you can do in these cases, Bernstein said, is decide what sounds best to you and maybe also to three word-savvy friends.

Like Sherry, I prefer “showed up at.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean the newscaster was wrong.

Get in touch JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs -- Even If You’re Wrong.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.