extra apostrophe's really annoy me

[paperclippy]

...especially when they are on official promotional material's for companie's like advertisement's and sign's.

AGH. Apostrophes are for POSSESSIVES not PLURALS (unless you are using a number of acronym, although they may have changed the rules for that since I went to school). My trigger today was an ad from NWA saying "Come back Monday to see next week's clue's!"

This is such a simple rule. It is something you should learn by 5th grade. In fact, I distinctly remember learning this stuff in 4th grade, and as a result, when I see people making this mistake it makes me think, "Did these people ever graduate from ELEMENTARY school?" It is really sad that you can make it all the way through high school in the school system without ever learning the difference between a plural and a possessive. I can understand (somewhat) people having bad spelling, since that is more a matter of recall than strict rules (as there are so many unusually spelled words in English), but seriously. Grammar has rules, and MOST of those rules are easy to follow and apply to 90% of cases.

Actually, what bugs me the most about the apostrophe issue is that IT IS GETTING WORSE. I didn't see all these errors when I was a kid, or even when I was in high school. Over the past 5-10 years or so the number of official materials with these errors on them has increased exponentially. What happened? Did Americans turn stupid or something (more so than we already were)? Did everyone who graduated in the past 10 years never have a lesson in grammar? Doesn't anybody READ anymore?? (Well, nowadays they are probably reading misspelled and grammatically incorrect websites I suppose.)

Oh, and while I'm ranting about grammar, there is another grammar rule that used to be followed and is now broken all the time, even in published works (that theoretically were edited by a professional proofreader). When you use a colon in a sentence, you are NOT supposed to capitalize the word after the colon. A good example: this is not capitalized. An incorrect example: This is unfortunately capitalized. I see this in the books I read nowadays. WTF? What happened that changed this rule?

Comments

[martian687.livejournal.com]

Amen. My big pet peeve is it's and its. One is short form for "it is", the other is possessive. These are NOT the same thing. How hard is this to understand???

[martian687.livejournal.com]

On second thought, maybe the reason people get this confused is because all other possessives use an apostrophe?

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

I know, right? The best thing I've seen to help you remember the difference with those is that "its" as a possessive follows the same rules as "his," "hers," and "yours."

[iguanawow.livejournal.com]

My elementary school didn't teach grammar rules at all. I don't know why, they just didn't. I finally learned (many of) the apostrophe rules in high school, when I had my mom proofread a paper for me. I used "it's" through the entire paper, regardless of which version it was. After I saw that she'd crossed out most of the apostrophes, I asked her why, and she explained it. While we were at it, we talked about other uses for apostrophes too. The combination of conversations like that and voracious reading have taught me far more about grammar and word usage than most of the people in my lab, which is why I get stuck editing most of the papers and documents our lab produces.

[mbrubeck.livejournal.com]

Tell it to Jane Austen.

(My copy of Pride and Prejudice is a reproduction of an early 19th century printing, and it uses possessive pronouns like it's, her's, and their's.)

[omega697.livejournal.com]

This is the same Jane Austen that spells it "chuse"?

:oD

[omega697.livejournal.com]

I am with you!

Another thing that used to piss me off was seeing things put in quotes for emphasis. Or even just for no reason at all.

[robotsinspace.livejournal.com]

I posted this below, but there's no reason I can't do it again! The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

[omega697.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I am too busy reading Literally, a Web Log.

[robotsinspace.livejournal.com]

Love it.

[mbrubeck.livejournal.com]

"When you use a colon in a sentence, you are NOT supposed to capitalize the word after the colon."

I would consider this a matter of style, not grammar. Style guides seem to differ on this point, and some offer quite complex guidelines. Just a small excerpt:

There is some disagreement among writing reference manuals about when you should capitalize an independent clause following a colon. Most of the manuals advise that when you have more than one sentence in your explanation or when your sentence(s) is a formal quotation, a capital is a good idea. The NYPL Writer's Guide urges consistency within a document; the Chicago Manual of Style says you may begin an independent clause with a lowercase letter unless it's one of those two things (a quotation or more than one sentence). The APA Publication Manual is the most extreme: it advises us to always capitalize an independent clause following a colon. The advice given above is consistent with the Gregg Reference Manual.

Perhaps you are thinking of guidelines for dependent clauses only?

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

Hmmm . . . I was taught in school never to capitalize after a colon. OTOH I can see that if you have a quote, it makes sense to make it capital, as the general rule is to always capitalize the first letter of a sentence in a quote. However, some of the examples of usage they have where they use a colon and a capital letter are cases where I would never be using a colon in the first place. In that sense, I suppose it is a matter of style.

There were two reasons for a drop in attendance at NBA games this season: First, there was no superstar to take the place of Michael Jordan. Second, fans were disillusioned about the misbehavior of several prominent players.

This one seems weird to me because one of the reasons is in the same sentence as the introduction and the other reason is not. I would probably either make it three sentences or rephrase it as, "The two primary reasons for a drop in attendance at NBA games this season were the lack of a superstar to take the place of Michael Jordan and the disillusionment of fans regarding the misbehavior of several prominent players."

Remember: Many of the prominent families of this New England state were slaveholders prior to 1850.

This one seems like excessive colon use to me. I would just write it as, "Remember, many of the prominent..."

Let us not forget this point: Appositive phrases have an entirely different function than participial phrases and must not be regarded as dangling modifiers.

I feel like had I written this one in an essay someone would have complained about it. Why use a colon? I would just say, "Let us not forget that appositive phrases..."

I dunno. I could rant about semicolons too but since most people have no idea how to use them, they're avoided in general, and you don't see too many misuses as a result.

[etiphany.livejournal.com]

I love semicolons .........

[robotsinspace.livejournal.com]

This is not exactly the same thing, but it's still hilarious: The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (and I capitalized "The" because it's part of a title :p)

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

OMG, that is so awesome. I love it!

[robotsinspace.livejournal.com]

I thought you'd appreciate it.