As regards names, I think you should try and get as close as possible to the native language. It's ironic, but only now he's an ex-president are the British media getting Sarkosy's name right (i.e not SarkOHsy).

But with ordinary words it's different. Australians and New Zealanders have different sounds for certain vowels, and if these are affecting the first two examples, they should stick with what's natural for them.

But much more important - how did you manage to get bullet points into your question?

@Brus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_%28road%29

@Skeeter Lewis - is that perhaps a polite expression for spam? :) I had thought of reporting it, but decided not to.

@Carl45 - Sorry to be the cause of your biggest pet peeve, but in this case those of us not bound by a style guide have a choice. As for using one rule in one word and not the other, it's partly to do with aesthetics - don't's just looks damn odd (what other word has two apostrophes?), and partly to do with the fact that don'ts doesn't look like any other word, whereas dos does (dos = parties, DOS etc). And thirdly it's more idiomatic.

So some of us will just keep going our idiosyncratic way, not believing in any one 'correct form'. In any case some dictionaries allow this -

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary has this: "dos and don'ts (also do's and don'ts)",
Merriam-Webster: "do, noun, plural dos or do's"

However I've just had a surprise - the apostrophe version is marginally more popular in AmE books, while the apostrophe-less version is significantly more popular in British books. And at the British National Corpus, there are eighteen examples of "dos and don'ts" but none of "do's and don'ts".

American books - http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=dos+and+don%27ts%2Cdo%27s+and+don%27ts%2Cdo%27s+and+don%27t%27s&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdos%20and%20don%27ts%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdo%20%27s%20and%20don%27ts%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdo%20%27s%20and%20don%27t%20%27s%3B%2Cc0

British books - http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=dos+and+don%27ts%2Cdo%27s+and+don%27ts%2Cdo%27s+and+don%27t%27s&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdos%20and%20don%27ts%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdo%20%27s%20and%20don%27ts%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdo%20%27s%20and%20don%27t%20%27s%3B%2Cc0

Judging by the examples at Google Books, this expression started to be used in the 1890s.The number of verifiable results for that decade are:

do's and don'ts - 18
do's and don't's - 7
dos and don'ts - 5

@jayles and Jasper - many apologies - I got confused with all these formulae - I didn't take in that there were two of you at it.

@jayles - Sorry, but you've totally lost me. No, don't try and explain, I'm just no good at maths. But I do like language.

@jayles - I don't use any of these, except for the original, but I'm afraid your stuff looks too much like mathematical formulae for me.

As for question forms, I like good old-fashioned QASI or QASV to be more precise:
Question word + Auxiliary + Subj + Infinitive (i.e.Verb), but not many students take it in.

And then explain that the exception is when the Q-word refers to the subject, as in 'Who hit the teacher'

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2012/08/when-to-use-do-after-who-in-questions.html

I do use subject complement occasionally, as it's sometimes used in course books, but object complements are so uncommon it's not worth the hassle. All my students know what a subject is but that's about it. I'd far rather they learnt instinctively than through formal grammar.

According to one source (link below) it all started in New York in the thirties, and that ‘Please Curb your Dog’ meant ‘Don’t let your dog do its business on the sidewalk. Let your dog do it in the road’."

On the other hand there does seem to be quite a lot of puzzlement over this. At the Urban Dictionary they suggest two meanings - generally control, as Brus suggests, or picking up after your dog.

Nor are the signs at Google Images consistent - on one, from the Carnegie Hills Neighbors, it follows porsche's idea - "Curb means off the sidewalk"

But one from Chicago Parks District is rather more general, saying - "an ordnance prohibits dogs to be permitted to run at large or commit any nuisance upon any sidewalk, parkway or public park"

Another one covers both Urban Dictionary definitions, saying - "leash-curb and clean up after your dog"

And another - "please curb and pick up after your dog" - that doesn't sound like making it go in the gutter to me.

The there's - "Please curb your dog away from the building", and the rather strange "Private Property, Do Not Curb Your Dog Here" - which sounds as though curb means "make / let it do its stuff"

I'm not surprised people are confused.

And one from Britain - nothing about curbing, of course (we'd be even more clueless as to what it means) - "Dog owners - Please ensure your dog is on a lead and does not foul the amenity areas" - a bit longer, but perhaps a bit clearer?

http://16thwabashdogpark.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-does-curb-your-dog-mean.html

@jayles - sorry that should have been new info later. Can you confirm that in:

SxMpp[OPT] - for "She had quickly walked her dog down the street the night before."

x = Aux and pp = past participle (or present participle in continuous)?

You might be interested in this - ten sentence patterns:
http://www.towson.edu/ows/sentpatt.htm

@jayles - within the structure of SVO etc English also puts old info first and info later, which is why passive can be useful, as well as delaying constructions like 'there is/are'. We also like to put longer bits of information last - end-weighting.