What do we teach them in these schools? - you_are_a_god_to_me

What do we teach them in these schools?

If there's one thing I hate, it's misuse of punctuation:
No, no, no, no, NO!
To make things worse, these signs were put up by Islington Council. The world is going to hell in a handcart.

2.10.06 09:51

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To date 13 Comment(s) TrackBack-URL

doctortripswitch / Website (2.10.06 11:11)
It's almost treason, I agree.

Your spamcatcher says 'pedic'. It's missing an 'ant'.

erudite baboon / Website (2.10.06 12:05)
Oh - I saw those the other day! I forgot you lived round there.

I hope you'll be writing to islington council. Oh please say you will.

Oink / Website (2.10.06 12:28)
I'll tell you what they tell them in schools - my eight year old niece was told by her teacher what transexualism is. I don't have an issue with it, but I can't work out how it came into conversation in junior school.

Voltan / Website (2.10.06 19:54)
It is all part of Voltan's overarching, evil masterplan. The plan is vast, utterly complex and far-reaching. It is also too cunning to be explained to little people, so don't even ask.

menace / Website (2.10.06 20:24)
The most annoying thing about these "grocer's apostrophes" is that they don't just show an imperfect, limited understanding of punctuation, but they show a complete lack of any understanding at all. For example, adding a wrongful apostrophe to "its" is a reasonable mistake to make - you're just transferring the possessive apostrophe of the noun to the pronoun. But adding one to a plural, where no posession can possible be construed, is not a reasonable mistake at all. It demonstrates total incomprehension of what apostrophes are!

And not only that! Not only does the grocer's demonstrate 0% comprehension, but it evidences a desire to dissimulate; an attempt to mask this incomprehension. If I don't understand something, I try to avoid using it. Therefore I can understand the absence of apostrophes where they are required. But these people prefer to use the thing they don't understand randomly, in the hope of getting it right by chance! Such people ought to be provided gratis with a variety of potentially deadly things: hedge-trimmers, parachutes, fugu, these come to mind. This would result in a gradual improvement in the general standard of punctuation.

Kate / Website (2.10.06 21:51)
Apparently, people tend to apostrophise plurals because they have a misguided belief that there is a letter missing. For example, the correct plural of potato, is potatoes - note the extra 'e'.
If they were then to pluralise say, 'leeks' they might reason that there should be an extra 'e' as in potatoes because they're not sure, just stick in an apostrophe between the k and the s just to be on the safe side.
However, I'm dubious as to whether the average grocer or signwriter would have thought about it that much.

menace / Website (2.10.06 22:30)
I'm dubious about that explanation. The "added-e" formation of plurals isn't the norm. I don't think it makes sense that people would revert in their uncertainty to this irregular form, rather than to a simple extra 's' - e.g. I can understand "potatos", but not "leek's".

It's probably just Pavlovian. People associate the apostrophe with an 's' at the end of the word. This is all they know about it, that it comes before 's' more often than it comes before other letters, and that it comes at the end of a word. They know nothing about its usage, so wherever they see a word ending in 's' - especially where it's at the end of a sentence, a double-ending - out comes the apostrophe. Like a flasher's tackle at the passing of a school bus.

Yags (3.10.06 09:53)
Menace, your righteous anger fills me with hope for the next generation of Canadians. For my part, I think I shall arm myself with a red marker and cross out any misplaced apostrophes that I find hanging around on public signage. They must learn.

And Kate - hello. Glad to see you've not vanished, merely adopted a new guise.

Kate / Website (4.10.06 23:58)
Ah, you saw through my (admittedly flimsy) disguise.

Menace, I was dubious too. It was something I read recently and I thought it was quite interesting that there might be some kind of subconcious thought process - after all, the easiest thing to do would be to not use an apostrophe at all. Why do people have the feeling that they should be putting one in, albeit in the wrong place?

Mr Purse (5.10.06 17:37)
I'm more amused that Menace writes: "these 'grocer's apostrophes'", suggesting that all of these apostrophes belong one, particularly illiterate grocer. But Yags will tell you that I'm very easily amused.

menace / Website (5.10.06 20:38)
I assume the phrase is referring to a figurative, generic grocer. The more you think about it, the grosser it grows, sir.

KE / Website (5.10.06 22:41)
Perhaps greengrocers simply over-ordered and now have a surplus of apostrophes - much like they always seem to have too many cabbages - and they need to get rid of them somewhere. But they could save themselves a lot of bad feeling if they'd just maybe give one away with each plum or something.

Vitamin news / Website (9.3.07 22:57)
Apparently, people tend to apostrophise plurals because they have a misguided belief that there is a letter missing. For example, the correct plural of potato, is potatoes - note the extra 'e'.