Debra Chapoton's Blog - Posts Tagged "misuse"
Apostrophes, not apostrophe's
I am not that old English teacher who carries a red pen and corrects bulletins, brochures and menus. However, I have surreptitiously made corrections on restaurant menu boards (like erasing the “e” on “potatoe”) and even used my fingernail to scrape off a few misused apostrophes from metal signs (they had “dog’s must be on a leash in these area’s”). My biggest pet peeve is the misuse of the apostrophe. Apparently teachers have had to drop that lesson from their plans, probably because they’re asked to do so many non-teaching things.
We tried a new restaurant yesterday and I was impressed that the menu only had two apostrophe errors. One was in a category heading: Sandwiches, Pita’s, Salads. Well, someone got sandwiches and salads right, but thought that (maybe because it’s a foreign word) they needed to use an apostrophe to pluralize pita. I’ve noticed that a lot in other restaurants, especially with the word tacos (and they don’t even have an apostrophe in Spanish!) Many years ago I taught eleven rules of plurals and the only rule that includes an apostrophe is for pluralizing numbers, letters, symbols and words (used as words). Examples: The 1990’s were good years. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s. She wrote &’s instead of and’s.
That’s it for using apostrophes for plurals. They are also used for contractions and possession, but I’ll save that for later. Whew! I got this rant down to under 250 words.
We tried a new restaurant yesterday and I was impressed that the menu only had two apostrophe errors. One was in a category heading: Sandwiches, Pita’s, Salads. Well, someone got sandwiches and salads right, but thought that (maybe because it’s a foreign word) they needed to use an apostrophe to pluralize pita. I’ve noticed that a lot in other restaurants, especially with the word tacos (and they don’t even have an apostrophe in Spanish!) Many years ago I taught eleven rules of plurals and the only rule that includes an apostrophe is for pluralizing numbers, letters, symbols and words (used as words). Examples: The 1990’s were good years. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s. She wrote &’s instead of and’s.
That’s it for using apostrophes for plurals. They are also used for contractions and possession, but I’ll save that for later. Whew! I got this rant down to under 250 words.
