Posts Tagged ‘apostrophe’
Friday, July 22nd, 2011
Today's Grammar Glitches come from a promotional article about a new pet salon. Groomingdale's (I love the name!) gets the apostrophe in the correct spot in the salon name but leaves it out in two important sentences in the article. Here is the first:
 I opened my first shop in 2002 because of our Afghan Hounds constant need for grooming.
HOUNDS needs to be possessive, indicating that the NEED FOR GROOMING belongs to the HOUND. I am assuming there is only one Afghan Hound in the family and so would put the aspostrophe before the S. The sentence should read this way:
I opened my first shop in 2002 because of our Afghan Hound's constant need for grooming.
The second sentence has the same apostrophe problem:
Groomingdale's is a stress free, safe and loving pet spa meeting any and all of your best "furry" friends pampering needs.
In this sentence, the PAMPERING NEEDS should belong to the "FURRY" FRIENDS (plural), so the possessive apostrophe should go after the S. The sentence should read this way:
Groomingdale's is a stress free, safe and loving pet spa meeting any and all of your best "furry" friends' pampering needs.
Tags: apostrophe
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar | 2 Comments »
Monday, June 6th, 2011
The Birmingham News has a Sunday column titled "Outside Looking In: What They're Saying About Us." I was quite surprised to discover, when reading this column last Sunday, that Michael Hastings (Hastings Ostrich Farms in Australia) thinks everyone in Alabama wears boots. He does sell his ostrich leather boots in Alabama, but I believe his opinion is slightly exaggerated. Perhaps he has Alabama confused with Texas?
 Anyway, Greg Richter put this sentence in the column and gave me the opportunity to remind readers once again about the difference between ITS (possessive, as in belonging to an ostrich farm) and IT'S (contraction of IT + IS, as in IT'S an exaggeration to say that everyone in Alabama wears boots.)
Ostrich leather is the second most durable, behind kangaroo, they say down under, and Hastings Ostrich Farms doesn't have it's head in the sand over the opportunities that entails.
This sentence needs the possessive ITS (without the apostrophe) to show that the HEAD belongs to the HASTINGS OSTRICH FARMS. The sentence should read this way:
Ostrich leather is the second most durable, behind kangaroo, they say down under, and Hastings Ostrich Farms doesn't have its head in the sand over the opportunities that entails.
Tags: apostrophe, pronoun, The Birmingham News
Posted in apostrophe, pronoun | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 27th, 2011
Here is a sentence that appeared in a comment this week and gives me the opportunity to remind readers yet again about apostrophe usage:
It's already in my favorite's folder so I can quickly access it.
Whoops! The first apostrophe in IT'S is correct because it is a contraction of IT and IS. The second apostrophe in FAVORITE'S should be removed. FAVORITES is plural or this person wouldn't have an entire folder for FAVORITES. The folder does not belong to the FAVORITES. That is just the title of the folder. (NOTE: I am very happy to be included in this person's FAVORITES folder!) The sentence should read this way:
It's already in my favorites folder so I can quickly access it.
Here is another sentence that appeared in a comment this week:
If your aiming to get much more viewers, and make additional income by using your own web site you really should have a look at this website….
Whoops! a couple times here. First, the word YOUR should be YOU'RE because it is meant to be a contraction of YOU and ARE. Second, VIEWERS can be counted, so MUCH should be changed to MANY. In addition, I would move the comma placed after VIEWERS to after SITE because everything through the word SITE is part of introductory information that comes before the main subject, which is YOU.
(NOTE: The extra three dots at the end of this sentence are an ellipsis, which means that I left something out at the end. What I left out was the recommended website because I don't recommend web sites I am not personally familiar with.) This sentence should read as follows:
If you're aiming to get many more viewers and make additional income by using your own web site, you really should have a look at this web site….
Tags: apostrophe, commas, word usage
Posted in apostrophe, comma, Grammar, Punctuation, word usage | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
A local newsletter arrived in my mailbox this week. The articles are well written, but many of the advertisements contain poor usage and punctuation. Here is one example:
 I take Pride in what I do and putting Smiles on my client's faces!
Whoops! Does this business person have only one client? That is what the apostrophe before the S implies. Putting the apostrophe after the S implies much more business! I would also add the word IN before PUTTING to make the sentence more parallel. NOTE: In advertising copy, I don't see a problem with capitalizing PRIDE and SMILES for emphasis. Here is my suggested edit:
I take Pride in what I do and in putting Smiles on my clients' faces!
Here is another Glitchy ad sentence from the same newsletter:
Our goal is to make sure your custom building needs are built the way you want it!
Whoops again! NEEDS (plural) does not describe what the customer wants built. And IT (singular) cannot refer back to the plural NEEDS. The goal should be to complete the PROJECT the way the customer wants it. The sentence should read this way:
Our goal is to make sure your custom building project is built the way you want it!
I take II
Tags: apostrophe, Parallel Structure
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar, Parallel Structure | No Comments »
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
 I received an order form this week for spring flowers. A very nice, grammatically correct letter from a young lady in our neighborhood accompanied the order form. She and her church group are selling plants to raise money for a summer mission trip.
The order form listed the bedding plants this way:
Begonia's Red Impatiens Trailing Petunia's Red Geraniums
Hm-mmm. I do not see the logic of inserting an apostrophe before the S on BEGONIAS and PETUNIAS and not inserting an apostrophe before the S on GERANIUMS. The word IMPATIENS ends in an S whether singular or plural, so I can see why no excess apostrophe was added there.
The order form should have listed the flowers this way:
Begonias Red Impatiens Trailing Petunias Red Geraniums
Some of my readers may be tired of seeing this subject over and over on Grammar Glitch Central, but it is an ongoing and widespread problem. If it wasn't, there would be no need for the www.apostropheabuse.com blog site, which you might enjoy checking out. They offer hundreds of funny examples of this problem.
TODAY'S BONUS GLITCH: In an article about recycling bread bags, I came across this useful but incorrectly worded suggestion:
Use them (plastic bread bags) to marinade veggies, chicken or meat.
Whoops! MARINADE is the wonderful mixture of oil, spices, and other ingredients you use to MARINATE your veggies, chicken or meat. MARINADE is a noun. MARINATE is a verb and should have been the choice here.
Tags: apostrophe, word usage
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar, wording | 3 Comments »
Monday, May 2nd, 2011
I admit that "apostrophized" is not a word, but I've decided to coin it because it is the perfect description of one of my pet peeves about poor punctuation. For some reason, many writers (not WRITER'S) have the idea that it is necessary to insert an apostrophe before the S when creating the plural of a word.
Here is one example that showed up in an Internet posting this week:
I'm a software solution engineer, with lot's of design experience behind my back.
Whoops! Internet English is much more casual than formal business English, so I don't have a problem with the word LOTS (EXTENSIVE would be the better choice in a business letter.), but LOTS should be written without the apostophe!
In editing this sentence, I would make two more changes. First, remove the comma between ENGINEER and WITH. It is not necessary. Second, the expression "BEHIND MY BACK" does not fit this situation. BEHIND MY BACK implies someone sneaking something past you. What the writer means is UNDER MY BELT, meaning experience already earned. Here is my edit of this one:
I'm a software solution engineer with lots of design experience under my belt.
I also came across this question on the Internet this week:
Are writer's overcritical of writing styles when giving advice to new authors?
Whoops again! The word WRITERS is plural, not possessive. The question should be written this way:
Are writers overcritical of writing styles when giving advice to new authors?
NOTE: For those of you who emailed, wanting to know my favorite choice in Friday's post, it was definitely #2, which supplies "cause and effect" reasoning to this sentence:
2. Now that all the leaves have fallen, it is time to refresh your pine straw beds and give your home or business an improved curb appeal. (Make the first part a dependent clause related to the main clause.)
I
Tags: apostrophe
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011
If you read this blog regularly, you know that one of my pet peeves is misplaced apostrophes. Here is one that appeared in a "People" segment in my local newspaper this week:
 A Hoover executive who says his wife and mother are big fans of two soap operas canceled by ABC says he is yanking the vacuum-makers' ads from the network in protest .
Whoops! Brian Kirkendall, vice president of marketing for Hoover vacuum cleaners, can yank all of the Hoover ads, but he is probably not in a position to yank ads for Electrolux and other brands. However, with the apostrophe coming after the S, the implication is that he is yanking ALL vacuum ads for all vacuum makers. Whoever wrote this piece for "People" should have placed the apostrophe before the S so that it referred to Hoover only, which is one vacuum maker.
I would leave out the hyphen between VACUUM and MAKER. I'm probably being picky about that, but it doesn't seem to serve a useful purpose. Here is my version of this sentence:
A Hoover executive who says his wife and mother are big fans of two soap operas canceled by ABC says he is yanking the vacuum maker's ads from the network in protest .
Tags: apostrophe, hyphens
Posted in apostrophe, Punctuation | No Comments »
Monday, April 4th, 2011
Today's Glitches come from posts I came across this week on several sites for writers. I don't expect writers to be quite as meticulous when they are posting blog comments, but these two Glitches are grammatical errors, not typos.
Here is the first:
I am a software solution engineer with lot's of user interaction design and usability experience behind my back….
First, LOTS (meaning a great deal of) does not need an apostrophe. It is simply plural, not possessive. It is a very casual term, bordering on slang, so I wouldn't recommend using it on a job application.
Second, "behind my back" is an idiom in English that means something like "secretly" or "without the person's knowledge," as in People I thought were friends have been making fun of me behind my back. What this writer wants is the expression "under my belt" or a more professional wording. In this case, he or she could just stop after EXPERIENCE and make the point.
I would suggest rewriting this sentence as follows:
I am a software solution engineer with years of user interaction design and usability experience.
Here is the second Glitch:
Are writer's overcritical of writing styles when giving advice to new authors?
REPEAT AFTER ME: It is not necessary to insert an apostrophe before the S if you are simply making the word plural. This sentence should be written as follows:
Are writers overcritical of writing styles when giving advice to new authors?
PLEASE NOTE: If you would like more examples of how to rid your own writing of apostrophe abuse, visit these blog entries–all from 2011: January 6 and 17 and February 2, 4, 7, 9, and 21. As you can see, this is definitely one of my pet peeves!
Tags: apostrophe, idioms
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar, wording | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 28th, 2011
Mark's Outdoors (www.marksoutdoors.com) –a hunting, fishing, and camping store in Vestavia Hills–is giving itself a new front entrance crafted with woodworking techniques forgotten by all but the Amish and a few other groups in the United States. Thomas Downs, owner of Southern Timber Framer, LLC, spent two years in Maine learning the old-world techniques he is using to craft Marks' new entrance.
I like this concept, but I don't care for the sentence crafted by Birmingham News staff writer Michael Tomberlin to refer to Downs:
 He hand hewns the 12-inch by 12-inch timbers from trees in Shelby County.
Whoops! HEWN is the past participle of the verb HEW. It should be used with helping verbs, as in HE HAS HEWN or I HAVE HEWN. It could also be used as part of an adjective, as in HAND-HEWN timbers, but it cannot be a stand-alone verb form as Tomberlin uses it. The correct present tense form is HEWS, not HEWNS. The sentence should read this way: uses itmberlin uslone HEWNHEWN or
He hand hews the 12-inch by 12-inch timbers from trees in Shelby County.
UPDATE ON FRIDAY'S POST: The owner of Horatios Books in England opened the ballot box in his store last evening and discovered a landslide victory for adding the apostrophe to his sign. The vote was 61% to 39%. "It looks like I'll be getting out the ladders," he wrote in an email today to Grammar Glitch Central. "I think we will probably be the only shop to have a democratically elected apostrophe."
You can still offer your opinion by using the Comment box at the bottom of this post (or Friday's post). So far, the vote on this side of the pond is 50% to 50%. If the tie vote continues, I will have to add my two cents, and you can probably guess what that will be!
Tags: apostrophe, The Birmingham News, word usage
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar, word usage | No Comments »
Friday, February 25th, 2011
A good friend who is also an excellent editor sent me a note this week about a bookstore in England that the "grammar police" have harassed for two years because there is no apostrophe in the bookstore's name. My friend read about it on Shelf Awareness (www.shelfawareness.com). "When we opened the shop we were a bit undecided whether to use an apostrophe or not," Horatios owner Robert Batt told Bedford Today (an English newspaper), "but in the end we decided not to because we thought it looked neater without."
Batt and his wife Sue say people are always asking them why there is no apostrophe in their sign, so they are holding a referendum during February. A ballot box and voting papers have been placed in the shop so customers can voice their opinion. "I didn't quite realize people's love of the English language and how irate they would get about a little apostrophe, it's caused us no end of trouble," says Batt.
The bookstore's website, www.horatiosbookshop.co.uk, offers some perspective on the voting:
 "The YES vote: The first impression of the Horatios signage is that Horatio is the owner or user of the bookshop therefore an apostrophe should be placed just before the S – Horatio's.
The NO vote: The precedence of long established companies: Madame Tussauds-used an apostrophe until it was dropped recently. Barclays bank named after James Barclay, son-in-law of the banks owner. Loyds (sic) bank named after Samuel Loyd (sic), one of the banks founders. ALL with NO apostrophe. Practicality No one at the shop likes climbing ladders."
Batt reports that, so far, the votes are evenly split. I'm wondering what my readers think. You can vote here using the Comment box. I will pass along your opinions to the owners of, um, Horatios, and let you know the outcome of their vote as well.
By the way, in case you are curious, as I was, Horatios is named not for Prince Hamlet's friend but rather for a long departed guinea pig who was a family pet.
Tags: apostrophe
Posted in apostrophe, Grammar | 4 Comments »
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