Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Gratuitous Apostrophe

While Hannah and I are the unapologetic language nerds in the family, all four of us enjoy pointing out errors in spelling and punctuation to one another.  Even the non-human members of House Full of Nerds get in on the copy-editing act (see Vintage Technology Obsessions, Preview of Coming Attractions).  While this can be amusing, it also has its drawbacks - my laziness is only part of the reason I rely too heavily upon the computer versus the typewriter or pen.  I don't place typos in the same category as spelling errors, except of course when I make them.

I also find that there's a slippery slope from smug superiority to "what is this world coming to?" horror.  Hand-lettered signs with misused apostrophes get a snort and a "Well, clearly, they didn't have Mrs. Armstrong for third grade!"  Use the wrong "your" or "their" and I might mutter that I could have sold you the editing services of my elder child when she was in seven.  But occasionally I'll come across something of this magnitude:
I can almost hear Mrs. Armstrong:  "What does Chip own - a 'by'?  Or do you mean Chip is?"  A hand-written sign is one thing, but a decorative apostrophe on a mass-produced product makes me wonder what else on the label is incorrect. (At least the accent over the o in limon is correctly placed.  There's a local fast-food chain whose misplaced accent has caused generations of Spanish students to call it "Taco Vee-AH'" instead of "Taco VEE-a.")  I ran across this product at a big-box store and had to take a picture for my family's amusement.  It was either that or mourn the downfall of western civilization, and I had errands to complete.


8 comments:

  1. It could be worse there could be those blasted useless floating quotes on words that the illiterates use because they do not know enough to italicise for emphasis. Oh, and then there are the news people who cannot pronounce continuing so every thing must be ongoing which now is used without hyphenation (on-going).

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    1. Yes, I find apostrophes misused for emphasis especially annoying/amusing because the user doesn't realize they appear sarcastic instead of enthusiastic, as in 'I couldn't have done it without my "amazing" staff!'

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  2. So I guess this is not the time to say I struggle with using semi-colons! ;-)

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  3. Speaking of news...misspellings on news graphics somehow bother me the most. It further erodes the dubious credibility of the news content to start with.

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    1. I agree! Although the Nerds don't watch TV news, we find plenty of mistakes in the newspaper. What especially galls me are the mistakes spell-check doesn't catch - no red underline, so it must be right!

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  4. Private label customer: "How can we make our product get noticed?"
    Genius marketing guy: "I know! Let's put one of those dangly thingies in the name!"

    Disclaimer: Any resemblance to actual Marketing Guy actions is purely coincidental. Seriously, they are the salt of the Earth. Or something like that.

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    1. Dangly thingies are the new C=K (Kountry Fresh)! It's too bad the marketing department didn't do its job better.

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