E. E. Cummings (was Re: Three simple questions)

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@earthlink.net>]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> Assuming there was no missing smiley here and that Larry
> was serious (which may be a silly assumption), I will say
> that I know exactly what Bob means, and I do the same
> myself. It is analogous to knowing that the following
> sentence is malformed.
> 
> E.e. cummings was one of the last centuries most brilliant
> poets.

I think it should be:

 "E. E. Cummings was one of this century's most brilliant poets."

Normally I don't pick on errors in grammar or punctuation, but there are
some errors that need a lot of stamping out:
 
"The poet replied on 1 March 1951: "E.E.Cummings, unless your printer
prefers E. E. Cummings/ titlepage up to you;but may it not be tricksy
svp[.]" 

(from http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps2.html, which has a neat
Fifth Wave cartoon to tempt you.)

As to the rest of the sentence, I am fairly sure that Robert meant to
use the possessive not the plural of century, but in this case both are
potentially right!  If I change the phrase to "of the last few
centuries," now the possessive seems wrong, but if I extend the phrase
to "the last few century's brilliant poets," we are back to the
possessive.  I could assume that it has to be the plural, since we are
still in the twentieth century, but E. E. Cummings was born in 1894. My
version doesn't raise quite as many questions.

Back to the topic at hand, I try very hard not to start a sentence with
a word which should not be capitalized, and go out of my way to avoid
starting a sentence with a number:  "The book, _1984_ by George
Orwell..." rather than "_1984_ by George Orwell.."

What do I do when I can't avoid the problem?  I avoid it anyway. ;-)