Maybe Bob is from the UK, where posessive business names, far more often than not, don’t use an apostrophe.
Not really related to grammar, but increasingly a peeve on business signs - telephone numbers displayed prominently, particularly on signs in inner city neighborhoods. What – someone driving by is going to write down the phone number of E-Z Hand Car Wash or Liberty Check Cashing as they drive by? Besides, if they did take the time to write them down, and they did call, what would the conversation be like?
“E-Z Hard Car Wash … what you want?”
“Uhhh … do you wash cars?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I see extra apostrophes everywhere. Do you know why this makes me so angry? Because correct apostrophe use is NOT THAT FREAKING DIFFICULT. Plural = no apostrophe, possessive = apostrophe. You don’t need a college degree for that. You don’t even need a high school diploma. You learned it in English every year starting in third grade, for Pete’s sake! It just ISN’T THAT HARD!
About a block from my house, there’s a business establishment with, not a home-made sign, but a professionally-made sign that proclaims said establishment to be a:
Launder Mat
There just aren’t enough :rolleyes:s (note the lack of apostrophes) in the world to express how I feel about this. Sheesh.
Orange Skinner: What did the cheerleaders’ sign say, anyway?
A while back I was killing time, wandering around a department store and found myself in the section selling curtains and such. What did the sign read? “Home Furnishing’s” with extra apostrophe and quotes. I had to leave before my head exploded.
There is hope for the future however, though perhaps not with apostrophes. At my highschool I was very proud to notice that last year’s “Can Food Drive” posters (provided by the local Red Cross, not our ASB) had all been corrected. Of course most of the kids had added question marks. S’more funny that way.
I have gotten so bad when I see them that I actually shriek when uses one where she shouldn’t. I can understand it at a construction site (for employee’s only) or at a rural dump (tresspassor’s will be prosecuted…), but … come on. There got to be a standard here!
The other day online I saw several people claiming that it’s actually perfectly acceptable to use apostrophes to indicate the plural, if the plural is of an acronym: DVD’s, CD’s, TV’s. Please tell me that this is not the case.
I believe it said, Lets Go Tigers! before editing.
Granted, the apostrophe in this case wasn’t a possession problem, but a contraction one, which is a different form of apostrophe abuse–but still. I’m tired of the apostrophe getting pushed around! And don’t even get me started on the slow decent to blackness that my beloved semi-colon is on…poor thing.
[sub]I bet if you told them that let’s actually meant let us, they’d look at you like you were insane…but we’re more of an athletically-geared school than an academic one, anyway. :rolleyes:[/sub]
Actually, I think they’re right, ElwoodCuse…I’m pretty sure it can go both ways in the case of acronyms and the like; DVDs or DVD’s, I believe, are both exceptable (not possitive on that, though).
I know it can be used to denote the plural with numbers, as in “the 70’s” or, “there are two 8’s in her phone number.” Again, IIRC, this is optional–it can be either 8s or 8’s. It is this optional thing, I believe, that caused all the confusion in the first place.
There is a muffin place near here called Maggies Magic Muffins.
They used to have a giant billboard that didn’t have the possessive, and it pissed me off. The sign outside the store doesn’t have the possessive, either.
Apostrophes used to be used for plurals of acronyms, but as acronyms have become more common, this practice is falling out of favor.
They can still be used for single letters or numbers, where omission might lead to confusion. For example, imagine leaving the apostrophe out of the following phrase: “There are three a’s in ‘bananas.’”
Son of a bitch. You’re right. Good eye. Man, if only I had planned this. Another way of saying “single quotes” is “apostrophe”. At least on my keyboard I use the same key for single quotes and the apostrophe. There are two alt-### combos that will get me a curly single quote (hooking one way or the other), but no single key can accomplish the same. So, somehow, in a thread about banning apostrophe’s, I was totally confounded and confused by a broken link, a broken link that was bugging me all day, and a broken link that ends up having been caused by a couple of rougue apostrophe’s masquerading as a single quotation mark.
Now, I assume I’ll have to put up with accusations of apostrophe smuggling, trolling, or, heaven forbid - telling a bad joke, but I assure you I am guilty only of falling victim to a particularly ironic case of Gaudere’s Law. But I can’t escape the lingering feeling that the apostrophe isn’t so innocent in all of this. I’ve been set up. I am afraid that I’ve been outsmarted by a punctuation mark. In my first post I conformed to the ban and excluded all apostrophes. The apostrophes, not the type to “go gentle into that good night”, somehow worked their way into my sub-concious & sabotaged my link. They even made me make a big deal about the messed up coding as if to flaunt the fact that they were hiding out in the open. Out among us. Blending right in as if they belonged in my post. Unlike Eve’s malicious use of the apostrophe in her wrist slashing joke, I am a victim here!
Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Thanks, Haucky, for the Sherlock treatment. I got a good belly laugh when I realized what had happened. I never would have noticed, and it would have gnawed at me forever. If they ever do ban the apostraphe they should make you the head of the Secret Police.
And there are two superfluous & unintentional apostrophes in that last post. Un-fucking believable. I’m getting gunshy everytime I go to hit a key on that side of the keyboard now.
Signage executed by high schoolers is a whole black pit unto itself. I don’t remember problems with apostrophes as much as randomly mixing upper and lower case letters, resulting in such gems as “ROllER SKaTINg TONITE”.
