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

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

And by the way, while I have been citing the OED recently, that is from my personal preference, but I acknowledge that it is not the only dictionary, nor the only style manual. (Indeed Oxford usage is out of step with much of the rest of British English usage over such matters as the spelling of "recognize" and similar words; I favour the Oxford usage since it echoes more closely the Greek root "-izein", but I, well, recognize that other British English users prefer the spelling "recognise".) As I say, one's personal preference does not a grammar rule make.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

"...one's personal preference does not a grammar rule make."

I'd say it does make a grammar rule, but that acceptance of the rule by other people is by no means guaranteed.

I do suffer from an internal conflict. On the one hand, I believe everyone has his own grammar and "English Grammar" is merely a description of a consensus; "ungrammatical" is therefore only relative, and as Bunn says the "ungrammatical" could be perfectly grammatical in another context or dialect. On the other hand, I get annoyed when people get things wrong :-D

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Mmn, that's getting pretty philosophical now. Can one person make a rule, without either being mandated to do so, or having other people validate the rule by accepting it?

I sympathise with your internal conflict!

"English Grammar" is merely a description of a consensus

This is very true, and one doesn't even need to go as far as talking about individual people's grammar(s) etc (though I think there is truth in that as well); there are a variety of 'correct' usages as demarcated in dictionaries and style manuals for a very wide range of spelling and grammar issues, such as placement of commas and punctuating inside or outside quotation marks and so on. Which, of course, has been my point all along.

I still feel people are WRONG! if they form the plural of "octopus" as anything other than "octopodes" (especially if they use "octopi") but I do admit that they are not necessarily 'wrong' by both dictionary and common-usage standards ;-)

(Reposted to correct bad html, sorry.)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm exactly the same. I do agree with pretty much everything David Crystal says about how language evolves, and how everything we now think is "correct" was originally seen as a debased and "wrong" corruption of the "right" language.

But yet... But yet... *wails*