Category Archives: apostrophes

Grammar Giggle – Accessories for Whom?

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I saw this in a Las Vegas shopping area last week while there for the NALS Educational Conference and I was a little confused. Does this store sell Women’s Accessories? Or are they selling accessories to one specific woman making them the Woman’s Accessories (and not selling them to anyone else)? Or are they a new accessory line designed by a person named “Woman”? It was a big sign on the outside of a store to lure you in . . . unless you are as highly disturbed as I am by mistakes that should not be on display in public places in signs that obviously cost a lot of money.

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Grammar Giggle – Millions of Adults, One Birthday

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I was wandering through Target the other day and spotted this sign. Because I’m particularly sensitive to issues involving the apostrophe, those errors seem to jump out at me. This sign made me wonder if all adults share one birthday, because that is what the sign–as written–actually says. It should be “Adult’s Birthday” indicating the birthday belonging to an adult or, even easier, leave the apostrophe out and call it “Adult Birthday.” Really, Target?

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Grammar Giggles – Newcomer . . . Just One?

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I spent Sunday with friends at the Delmar Racetrack. Weather was beautiful, wine was delicious, and time with friends was amazing. However, as the girls say now, “We can’t go anywhere nice.” They say that because as soon as I pull my phone out, they start looking around for errors. This one I found right inside the gates as we were walking in. “Newcomer’s Seminar Daily” was one of the first signs we saw. While I commend the Track on helping people new to horse racing to be comfortable with the language, etc., I wondered to myself why they only held a seminar for one newcomer at a time. When you add the possessive, you should test it by taking off the apostrophe (and the “s” if one is there) to check the root word. In this case, that word would be “newcomer” which is obviously singular–one newcomer. They also apparently know the correct way to state it because it was correct in the program. They are training all of the “newcomers,” so you would START with that word and then make it possessive.

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Acronyms, All Caps, Plurals, and Possessives

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This topic came up recently in my own task of proofreading. If you have an acronym or another all capital letter word, how do you make it plural or possessive? And then once you do, is the added pluralization or possession in all caps or not?

The short answer is that any pluralization or possession is added to the base word, but in this case, it is NOT in all caps:

  • There are never any ATMs around when you need them.
  • ADOT’s signs don’t always help the traffic flow.

There are times where you will need to use an apostrophe to avoid confusion:

  • Her report card had all A’s and B’s.

Here, the “A’s and B’s” are not possessive, but it could be confusing to leave the apostrophe out in “As” as it is a different (and real) word. In this case, the apostrophe in “B’s” is for consistency.

There is some confusion when using abbreviations because making the abbreviations possessive may be different than making the entire original words possessive:

  • The United States’ geography is so varied and interesting.
  • The U.S.’s geography is so varied and interesting.

You will use the rules depending on how it sounds. The “United States” spelled out does not need an apostrophe and “s” because you don’t say the extra “s.” But using the abbreviation “U.S.,” you would say the extra “s,” so would add the apostrophe and “s.” See Apostrophail!.

Just remember that only the original acronym or abbreviation should be in caps and any pluralization or possession would be added to that, but not in caps.

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Grammar Giggle – Cod Fillet’s and Bags

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I found this in a grocery store in Albuquerque. If I were to read this sign literally, I would see that it is $9.99 for the Cod Fillet’s 16 oz. bag, which sounds significantly overpriced unless it is a designer bag. And to warrant a sign, that Cod Fillet must have more bags than some of my friends do. I’m pretty sure they meant to say that the $9.99 was for a 16 oz. bag of cod fillets, but that’s not what it actually says.

 

Cod

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Grammar Giggle – This Shows Possession Not Pluralization!

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This is on the window of a restaurant next to my office building. As used here, this leads me to believe that either the gyro owns the sandwich and the platter, the owner’s name is Gyro, or it is the name of the business. All of those choices are incorrect (because I have eaten there and know it is your typical gyro) or I wouldn’t feel the need to pull out my phone as I was walking by. There should be no apostrophe at all so that you know they are selling more than one gyro (or it would be a VERY short lunch rush). If you missed my article about apostrophes, check it out here and then quit using them to make words plural . . . please!

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Grammar Giggle – Gas Pumps and Every Possible Grammar Error

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There are so many errors in this one sign I don’t think I could even get through them all. There are apostrophes used to make words plural, not enough periods, words that should be a single word divided into two words, capital letters where there doesn’t need to be or a small letter (if you want to be consistent) where a capital letter should be, misspellings . . . and my brain has now exploded.

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Grammar Giggle – Thankyourmamasgiving

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Random apostrophes–love them! The only reason a word like this would ever have an apostrophe would be if letters were missing, as in Thank[your mama]sgiving. Otherwise, as in this example, I have no idea why there would be an apostrophe in the middle of this word.

ThanksgivingWednesday

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