Outrage!

[ladyofastolat]

A birthday card was just passed around at work for us all to sign. It included a rogue apostrophe! This was in the proper printed greeting! You kind of expect these thing's in handwritten sign's in greengrocers shop's or special's board's in pub's, and we all make slip's of the pen every now and then, but a proper published greeting's card? Outrage! Outrage! What i's the world coming to? et'c e'tc.

It's not even a funny mistake. Rogue inverted commas can be. ("Fresh" chicken soup). Confusion over similar words can be. ("The meat is complimented by the sauce." "Beware the deadly rouge gorilla fighters" etc.) This was just annoying. I am sorry to say that I had to discreetly cross it out before I could sign the card.

Comments

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Forget hand-lettered signs, I was surprised all those years ago when I first saw the great big illuminated CD's sign in Tesco's.

Hand lettered - when I was a kid and there were shops selling spare parts for amateur radio construction, there was a cardboard box in one shop with Amater radio crystals crossed out in favour of Amature radio crystals. <sigh>.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Discreet? Attention should be drawn to this sort of thing (but I know what you mean...)

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

My favourite missing-apostrophe story (apocryphal or not) is the notice "Residents refuse to be put in the bins" ;-)

[segh.livejournal.com]

There's a misspelt sign in a cafe window in Bromley, and when I saw it yesterday I suddenly remembered my mother telling me that there was once a shopkeeper who deliberately misspelt signs in the hope that people would come in to correct his spelling and stay to buy stuff. Who would bother to do so nowadays? Or even notice?

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

Heh. One of our checks for our branch offices has a comma where there should be none. And every time I print one out, I wince and die a little more inside.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I've actually been tested on correct use of apostrophes in an internal job interview at JOLF. It was for a secondment to a department writing course material, and at least one person thought it was important.

[nilsigma.livejournal.com]

Correct spelling and punctuation are your last refuge as you get older - you may not be able to text, or open packaging, or remember where you live, but you still have a firmer grasp of basic English syntax than all those smug, young b******s.