moorjoy » Apostrophes

We spell things differently in Heanor

lapsedheathen — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:09:18 +0000

Even i’Tunes is at it now

lapsedheathen — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:23:40 +0000

Where have all the proofreaders gone?

lapsedheathen — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:15:29 +0000

Sorry about the quality, I was dodging Westfield Derby security guards.

How many people does this stuff pass through before it’s printed?

Don’t mess with the classics

lapsedheathen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:45:09 +0000

‘Nuff said.

The DoT’s at it too

lapsedheathen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:53:29 +0000

You now how when you’re hanging about in a garage waiting for them to finish with your car & hand it back you’ll read anything to pass the time? Well in this case it was an A4 poster about diesel emissions and I saw this:

Looks like someone had the good grace to help though, there’s been more than one attempt to remove the offending apostrophe.

And the Jag passed its MOT as well.

The Grauniad strikes again

lapsedheathen — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:22:26 +0000

Quite the little saga in the movie blog of The Guardian today. The sub-heading was:

“Ricky Gervais’s first film as director purports to show us that honesty is the best policy. But it’s last-reel cop-out seems to tell us the opposite”

Can you spot the deliberate error? It was soon pointed out:

Attention Copy Editor: Please fix the grammatical error in the headline; replace the contraction it’s with the possessive pronoun its. Thank you.

Only to stir the grammar-Nazi Nazis:

No keep it!, sodding grammar Nazis, possessive pronoun my arse we all knew what it meant

Soon to be followed by a retort:

And we all knew it was wrong.

And a resolution:

thanks, changed now.

All in the space of 37 minutes. It’s a jungle out there.

Goose Fairs Mushy Pea’s

lapsedheathen — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:25:48 +0000

Two dodgy apostrophes spotted at Goose Fair that I didn’t manage to get photos of – ‘Goose Fairs Food Court’ and ‘Mushy Pea’s’.

So I guess on average everything was fine.

Stolen from Twitter

lapsedheathen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:03:28 +0000

Seemed appropriate to post this here, but I despair …

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/3787/emericav3.jpg

It belongs to the shop, too

lapsedheathen — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:48:09 +0000

My first rogue apostrophe capture, from no less an institution than the Natural History Museum. At the end of the dinosaur exhibit there are a selection of toy dinosaurs through the ages and a small label referring interested observers to the shop where some of the items can be bought.

But sadly it refers to the ‘museum’s shop’s’. I assume that it means the shops belonging to the museum but working that out is a bit tortuous. After a few days I did, in a nice way, email the museum to point this out and got a very nice reply thanking me for my interest and blaming temporary staff. They say that they’d sort it out but that it would take a week or so. Next time I’m in the area I’ll see if they meant it …

Crich

lapsedheathen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:05:03 +0000

This is probably how Tippex came to be invented.

Sign at Crich Tramway Museum, September 2009.