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

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It's ungrammatical, but I'm not sure even that is wrong. It's almost expected in the context of handwritten signs on greengrocery. Could we consider it a form of market-specific dialect?

It's not as though it is likely to cause misunderstandings.

I used to fuss about punctuation, but nowadays I am more inclined to revel in having a brain so well formed that can easily process a sentence despite anomalous punctuation, in several different ways, and make a joke about it - with no inclination to fall over and spout error messages. grrr.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Fair point!