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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.
Maybe Gadsden didn't have time to worry about shit like that when there was a revolutionary war going on. The message is the most important part of the flag...and that message is loud and clear without the apostrophe.
ReplyDeleteSome things supplant proper grammar and punctuation. Things like content, expression, and readability. Apostrophes fall to the wayside when analyzing the more important aspects of the image or text at hand.
In fact...apostrophes were designed to dump useless shit (like extra letters) to the side in order to facilitate better reading and writing. They are largely meant to be ignored (hint hint).
Or he was lazy...
ReplyDeletedesign decision and technical difficulty. typesetting in all caps makes it difficult to get an apostrophie in there. makes it all look wonky and off-balance
ReplyDelete