Guessing Post

[holmesticemods]

Thank you so much for another wonderful round of Holmestice! The mods want to say THANK YOU to all the creators who joined us for this, our twentieth round -- especially given how tumultuous these last months have been. Being in this community with you is a joy and an honour.

Reveals and the Master List go up on June 20th. Until then, please enjoy and comment on all the lovely fanworks. Creators, please do NOT respond to Dreamwidth comments or post your works elsewhere on the Internet until reveals go up in the community. You may of course reply to comments on AO3, which preserves your anonymity.

In the meanwhile, stay tuned: treats are coming up! For anyone thinking of making a treat, we will accept treats right through until reveals, so if there's a prompt that inspires you, please have at it! Just use the regular submission guidelines and send your headers to holmesticemods@gmail.com.

If you'd like to guess who created what in this round, here's a list of all the contributors for the main gifts. (You'll have to put in some extra work to guess the treat-makers!) Go ahead and take a guess! It's all in good fun.



alexcat
apprenticeofdoyle
bakerstmel / Callie4180
cam_elot (used to be thefrenchweirdone)
discordantwords
dryadinthegrove
evilinsanemonkey
fleetsparrow
fridaythegowerstreetcat / gowerstreet
gardnerhill
graycardinal
iwantthatcoat
Keenir/Rodlox/Anthony
language_escapes
mafief
milverton
monkiainen
natrix_natrix
oldshrewsburyian
pipmer1
rachelindeed
saki101
sanguinity
sanspatronymic
scfrankles
simplyclockwork
smallhobbit
starfishstar
strampunch
tepidspongebath
trobadora
twicecurvedspine / eyes-on-stilts
urbanhymnal
write_out



Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice authors, artists, podficcers, and vidders! See you again on the 20th, when we reveal who made what!

Comments

[iwantthatcoat]

Cool! Always learning! We had a similar debate over Holmes’ vs Holmes’s. Apparently the original manuscript uses Holmes’ which I always thought to be the “modern” way.

[starfishstar]

OH REALLY? I am very interested to hear this about Doyle, because a while ago I was trying to pin down (in Harry Potter fandom) whether British English required me to write e.g. Holmes's, even though my natural (American?) instinct always takes me to Holmes'. Opinion was *just* split enough that I decided I could keep on with my Holmes', even though British opinion clearly leaned towards Holmes's. So I'm extremely interested to hear there may be a basis for British-usage Holmes' after all! :D

[iwantthatcoat]

We were debating this on Twitter. I know it included Elinor Grey and possibly Robert Perret and Brad Keefler (sorry, I am sure I am getting names wrong here) ? Someone else joined the convo and showed me the original manuscript for a few stories. I can’t remember which one. Perhaps Hound? It was in Doyle’s handwriting and had Holmes’ in script. I was rather shocked.

[starfishstar]

Neat! I'll have to look into the history of that more sometime. I wonder if it's another thing (like the Mr./Mr discussion above) where UK and US usage used to be more similar, and then diverged, and as Americans we assume that the current British usage must of course be the original one, and our usage the one that diverged, when often it's the other way around! (As with got/gotten. And oh, probably lots of other things I can't think of right now!)

[graycardinal]

That will have been Brad Keefauver, I expect; you've been keeping good company. (As I recall, all three of that trio - Elinor, Robert, & Brad - were at Left Coast Sherlock this past fall.)

[iwantthatcoat]

Yes indeed! Just Twitter follower chat— I can’t say I know them well—but I like to get into a good discussion there whenever possible. Came up around the time I submitted stuff for Doyle’s Rotary Coffin.

[scfrankles]

Just butting in here to say, as a British child in 1980, I was taught that both -s' and -s's was correct. And I seem to remember my teacher leaning towards the former...

To me, Holmes' looks more elegant but Holmes's better reflects the pronunciation so I would be happy with both. But Frankles's (for example :P) doesn't reflect the pronunciation - the possessive is just said the same way - so I would personally never use it. It just looks awkward to me.

[starfishstar]

Oh, that's so interesting! As rachelindeed said above, it does seem like a lot of the things that I think of as British/American usage differences (e.g., what you mentioned above about that distinction of using "" only for reported speech,= and '' for any other kind of quoting, or the whole Mrs./Mrs question) are fairly recent phenomena, and that as recently as a few decades ago, our usage had *not* yet diverged. Fascinating!!

It's also so interesting to me what you said about -s' vs -s's. Because when I was asking around about this a bit ago, the British people I asked varied on whether they thought both were okay or only -s's was okay, but they all mentioned some variation of what you said: that technically the two spellings represent the two different pronunciation possibilities. Which makes sense, to look at it that way, but it had NEVER occurred to me! (Can't speak for all Americans, but I do think that idea is at least somewhat less on our radar.) To me -s' and s's were always just two variant spellings of the exact same thing, grammar-wise, and not at all connected to pronunciation.

Language will never cease fascinating me!