Today is Veterans Day!

This is a reposting of our 2014 Veterans Day blog post.

The Library is Closed today, November 11, 2015, as Veterans Day is a Court Holiday.  The Law Library will be open tomorrow, Thursday, November 12, 2015. A list of Court Holidays is available on the Circuit Court’s website at http://www.circuitcourt.org/court-holidays.

For those of you who love grammar, this blog abides by the federal government’s spelling of Veterans Day. Specifically, there is no apostrophe before the “s” at the end of “Veterans”.  According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (note that there is no apostrophe here either), “Veterans Day” does not include an apostrophe “because it is not a day that ‘belongs’ to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans.”*  What do they mean?  Well, thanks to the addition of an apostrophe, the “Veteran” in “Veteran’s Day” and the “Veterans” in “Veterans’ Day” are nouns in the possessive case (singular in the first case and plural in the second case), which implies that the day itself belongs to an individual veteran or to veterans as a group.  However, without the apostrophe, the “Veterans” in “Veterans Day” is an attributive adjective, which means that “Veterans” describes an attribute of “Day” without being possessive.  Thus, the day does not belong to an individual veteran or veterans as a group. However, each of these three options can be grammatically correct.  Which do you prefer?

For more information about the history of Veterans Day, check out http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp.  Do you want to read the United States statute designating November 11 of each year as Veterans Day and a legal, public holiday, check out http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-89/pdf/STATUTE-89-Pg479.pdf or you can come visit the library to view a hard copy.

*http://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetday_faq.asp