Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The apostrophe is... like... such a problem... y'know?

Apparently Walt and Richard Nordquist are not the only ones concerned about the decline in standards of written and spoken English. Comments on yesterday's post have come from:


Agent 2 - What a relief to know that the apostrophe catastrophe is grinding on someone else. I see it everyday but of course it is not on something that has spellcheck. Signs in stores, or flyers, "store hour's" and "two pizza's" plus the name "the Caruso's (when it is not possessive!)


I am not a daughter of an English teacher. I have trouble with dangling participles and when to use lay, lie, who and whom, however can usually avoid those in a conversation, but you can't avoid seeing an apostrophe and that really makes you look dumb!

Agent 17 - It won’t do any good as it has metastasized, but please attack the creeping misuse of “I am like”. I even hear it from TV talking heads.....aaaargh!

Unfortunately, William Safire has shuffled off this mortal coil, but his column "On Language" marches on in the New York Times. [Shouldn't there be commas after "column" and the close quote mark following "Language"? Ed.] Walt also recommends the collection of columns published under the same title in 1980 and reprinted umpteen times since.

And... this is for Ed.... the UK news and satire magazine Private Eye has for years ended the letters column in its print edition with a section now called "Pedants Corner". The previous title was "Pedant's Corner", but a pedant argued that, since there were many contributors, it should be called "Pedants' Corner", and... you get the point. Perhaps Ian Hislop and Richard Nordquist are related? We should be told!

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