Grammatically Correct?

[Heather]

So, Brian thoughtfully pointed out last week that he thought the description of our site should include Lady's Slipper not Lady Slipper.

I honestly have no idea which is correct? Does it matter or do you consider them interchangeable? I was just looking at search results and started to wonder how people are searching for lady slipper information. Would having an 's' on the end impove our search ratings?

I just don't know...

What do you guys think?

 

[likespaphs]

i think y'all are nuts!
i mean, well, since i pointed this out...
i'm pretty darn sure, technically, they're called lady's slipper orchids not lady slipper orchids.
i think, like calling hippeastrums amaryliss, calling them lady's slippers would confuse a lot of people....but then again, most search engines i think would search automatically for both terms.

 

[gonewild]

So, Brian thoughtfully pointed out last week that he thought the description of our site should include Lady's Slipper not Lady Slipper.

I honestly have no idea which is correct? Does it matter or do you consider them interchangeable? I was just looking at search results and started to wonder how people are searching for lady slipper information. Would having an 's' on the end impove our search ratings?

I just don't know...

What do you guys think?

I have always used ladyslipper as one word.

In your meta tags you should include it in different ways...

ladyslipper
lady slipper
lady's slipper
ladys slipper

People have a tendency not to use ' when they do searches.

 

[Heather]

Okay, thanks. Only one of them was actually listed so I added the other three and a few other things that were missing (such as Cyps and Cypripedium).

I started thinking about this again today because yahoo is spidering us like crazy today and I was wondering why...

 

[Heather]

i think y'all are nuts!

:sob:

 

[gonewild]

Some use:

Lady's-Slipper
Ladies slippers

And many:

slipper orchids

 

[likespaphs]

what does spidering mean?

 

[NYEric]

creeping in checking the web-thread but not joining.

 

[gonewild]

Spidering by a search engine like Yahoo or Google is when they visit a website to see what the content is.

It is called spidering because their robot software crawls through every page like a spider on a web. The spider reads all data and indexes it so when someone does a search they know what webpages have the data. Since we have talked about spiders and spidering the search engine spiders will find this thread on their next visit and after that someone doing a search for spiders could be sent to this thread. The more details the spider learns about a webpage the better results the page will have in the search engine results. By writing this paragraph about spiders it has increased the value of content for the spider as compared to only a one word mention of "spider". Because I mentioned software and search engine the "spider" will report that the content is about search engine spiders and not real spiders.

For the above reason the more info you put in your posts about the subject you are writing about will increase the search engine results for the whole forum. So when writing on the internet it is good to be a blabber mouth, unless what you are writing you want to remain hidden.

 

[NYEric]

Of course, the more your site is viewed the more loonies, [and I don't mean $2 canadian coins], turn up.

 

[Barbara]

That's why this Canadian coin keeps it short.oke:

Oh by the way, I always just type 'Paph' when searching. If me or the the search engine is having a bad day, then I resort to diffierent terms and/or quotation marks.

 

[Heather]

Of course, the more your site is viewed the more loonies, [and I don't mean $2 canadian coins], turn up.

That's true, Eric. How did you find us, btw? oke:

 

[gonewild]

That's true, Eric. How did you find us, btw? oke:

Guess who is #1 on Google for grex whore.
Spiders don't miss anything.

 

[Heather]

Guess who is #1 on Google for grex whore.
Spiders don't miss anything.

OM f'n G!
:rollhappy:

Well, I guess I'm good for the forum, eh? :noangel:

 

[NYEric]

That's true, Eric. How did you find us, btw? oke:

I think I was looking for strawberry blond cooks, no um, lady's who like orchids, no uh Phrag hybrids, yeah that's the ticket..:noangel:

 

[John M]

Well, since they are supposed to resemble a ladys' slipper, that is, a slipper belonging to a lady, isn't (ladys' slipper), the correct way to spell it? After all, a lady slipper (or, ladyslipper), is a slipper that is itself - female; which is not what we're trying to say.

I checked the Tobermory, Ontario (native slipper orchid capital of Canada), website. They spell it "Lady's Slipper"....two words, two letter "s"; but, the ' is on the wrong side of the "s" (a very, very common mistake). The ' should be following the "s" (to indicate ownership), not before it (which indicates an abreviation).

Then, I checked out Antecs' web address. They spell it "ladyslipper" (one word, one "s"). I doubt that there is a good answer to your question, Heather. There seems to be a lot of common usages / spellings.

BTW, a loonie = $1. coin. A toonie = $2. coin. : )

 

[kentuckiense]

I'm no grammar buff, that's for sure. However, I'm not quite understanding how Ladys' Slipper is correct.

Ok, so we have a Lady. A slipper belongs to this lady. So would it not be Lady's Slipper?

If we have more than one Lady, then we have Ladies. So then wouldn't it be Ladies' Slipper? You know, like Ladies' Home Journal. Hey, my mom subsribes.

 

[John M]

No, "Lady's Slipper" is not correct. In that usage, the ' indicates that a letter (or letters), in front of the "s" have been omitted....such as "That lady is rich"; becomes "That lady's rich". To show that the lady owns the slipper, the ' comes after the "s".

As for "Ladies' Slipper", yes, if a bunch of ladies own the same single slipper, that is correct. However, now we're getting too far away from the context and intended meaning of the original, coined phrase. We're not really concerned with multiple ladies. One lady will do just fine in this context. The subject is not ladies; but rather, it is flowers, orchid flowers, slipper orchid flowers, ladys' slipper orchid flowers. Singularly, it would be Ladys' Slipper, or, Ladys' Slipper Orchid. The plural form of this would be to simply ad an "s" and say "Ladys' Slippers", or, Ladys' Slipper Orchids". In this context, we need refer to only one lady to make the metaphorical connection to the flower that is being described.

 

[John M]

Hey! If you Google "Grex Whore", the first hit you get is this site! Heather, you're famous! Ha, ha, ha!

 

[gore42]

John,

Yes, an apostrophe does take the place of a missing letter in a contraction, but it's used in the same place to show posession. So, Lady's slipper does indicate posession by the Lady. The apostrophe at the end of the word is only proper in circumstances in which the word already ends with an s (although adding an "apostrophe s" is also an acceptable variation). For example "Carlos bought a dog. Carlos' dog is named Roger".

The exception is with the word "its". Since "its" is is already a posessive pronoun, it doesn't take an apostrophe unless it's being used as a contraction for "it is".

- Matt