I'll take a few Sub's, please!

Here's a good one from another Williams alumna. It's a little tough to see, but the apostrophe is in the word subs. Or, I guess it's Sub's. Anyway, Mr. Sub owns the steak, the pastrami, the veal parm, etc., but Ms. Salad does not own anything because she is just appropriately plural. I still don't get how you can get it right in one part of a sign, but wrong in another.

My theory is that if someone shortens a word - like writing sub for submarine - then an apostrophe gets put in there for no reason. Perhaps it is to take the place of 'marine'.

Sandwich boards are always good for misfit apostrophes.

The Emmy's are on tonight!

In honor of the Emmy Awards tonight, here is a great one. I was looking at Twitter today because while I don't tweet, I do love one particular person's page. Anyway, I wanted to see what the difference was between followers and following. I went to the twitter homepage and saw this. If you look closely at the most popular searches on Twitter today, the most popular - even more popular than the correct plural Emmys - is Emmy's. That means that more people searching on Twitter think that the plural of Emmy is Emmy's. Fantastic.

Sweet Font Though...

There are so many fun things to point out in this sign. First, there's the obvious apostrophe misuse. What we've often found amusing is one's need to insert an apostrophe every chance they get. Is there an S? Slap on an apostrophe. I'm surprised it doesn't also say "Plea'se."

Adding to the fun of this sign is the fact that it can also be included in one of my other fave blogs which features the always amusing misuse of quotation marks. Unless the sign maker intended for the please to be sarcastic.

But the real kicker is that this sign is on the side of a large-format printer in a professional sign-printing establishment. Nice work guys! AND, to top it all off, I believe the sign was made with a sticky vinyl material which allows each individual letter and punctuation mark to be added and removed separately. This sign could easily be fixed...and yet it stays.

New Plural Rule - A=Apostrophe O=No Apostrophe

This is the sign from an establishment on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. As you can see, plurals of words ending in O are formed properly while plurals of words ending in A are formed with an apostrophe. I suppose that's a new rule learned only in select elementary school English classes. S after O but not after A, instead you insert an apostrophe. It's taught right after the lesson on adding -es to make a plural and just before the lesson on deer and deer.

It continues to beg the question whether the sign makers say anything when presented with the instructions for the sign.

When the Missing Apostrophe is the Least of Your Problems

Our brother has become very enthused about this blog (or just loves a reason to procrastinate), and sent along this gem and the associated commentary below.

This first came to my attention because of the obvious missing apostrophe in "Dicks." All well and good, but not too compelling, especially since Dick's stylish letter design probably limited his flexibility in adding the apostrophe. Maybe he knew he needed it, but why sacrifice the perfect balance of those five letters with the burden of a little apostrophe? I probably would have appreciated better the apparent punning use of "buy" instead of "by" in "buy the bagfull" if I wasn't already suspicious of Dick's mastery of English grammar. Did he really mean it? Is it actually clever?

But I really began to question Dick's sanity when I considered the center of the sign. What creature is that holding the hamburger? Is it a skunk? A teddy bear with a cute puffy tail? A koala? And why is the mysterious fluffy creature feeding the hamburger to a rooster with that furtive look in its eye? Is this Dick's response to the Chick-fil-A "Eat Mor Chikin'" campaign? "Hey, chikin' eat mor meet."

Sara's note: "Bagfull" should actually be spelled "bagful." Man, this sign is a mess.

Not So Happy Heinys

This is the wrapper from a cloth diaper. The Trademark name is Happy Heinys like it's the plural of heiny, no apostrophe. But, on the back, it's spelled Happy Heiny's like these are owned by someone named Heiny. Now, if the official name is Happy Heinys, when you make it possessive, wouldn't it be Happy Heinys' diapers? I've seen it on multiple cloth diaper merchant websites as Heiny's, though on their official website it's Heinys. Confused yet?

I don't know whose Heinys could be happy with this!

Kicking the Misfit Apostrophes Way Old School

I guess this Misfit Apostrophe thing has been going on for some time. I got this from a fellow Williams grad whose son is going to study abroad in the UK and wanted a flag that was not as obviously American as the Stars and Stripes. This flag is called the Gadsden flag and the image is from 1775. You can find more about it on Wikipedia. Anyway, there's no apostrophe in don't.

This caused us to wonder about what grammar and punctuation was like during the founding of the US. Were apostrophes uncommon? Maybe people at that time didn't use the apostrophe to stand in for missing letters. Though in my very short Google search, I found that the apostrophe was used as early as the 16th century.

This post isn't to mock the flag, but just to point out that the apostrophe has been inserted or omitted incorrectly for quite some time.

We are open to any comments speculating about why Gadsden would not have included the apostrophe. Maybe it was artistic so as not to interrupt the flow of the letters with an apostrophe.

Discuss.