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A Chicago area girl born and bred, I've lived in Mississippi, Montana, Michigan, and...ten years in the wilds of northeastern Indiana, where I fought the noble fight as a book editor. Now, I'm back in Illinois once more...for good. (At least I intend to make it that way!)

Thursday, July 26, 2012

I Know Why Padded Cells Exist. Truly. I Do.

...it's because people have been driven bat shit crazy by seeing too many signs with plurals formed by adding apostrophes.
(Maybe I should clarify. ONE, period, is too many.)

Walmart put up some lovely new signs over their apparel departments.
Girl's.
Boy's.
Junior's.

Uh...yup.

The signs are BEAUTIFUL. The colors are great. They're obviously rather new, well-coordinated with the store, etc. Except...every time I look at them, my teeth grind.

And these things are all around us.
And we wonder why the stress levels in today's society are so high?

This is basic English, folks. Yanno. What you should have learned in school, oh, about third grade or so. This isn't just being "picky" because I'm a writer. This is WRONG. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
THERE IS NEVER AN EXCEPTION.

Oh, well. Maybe with all that teeth-grinding going on, it keeps dentists happy.

Or maybe I should say it keeps DENTIST'S happy?

Agonizedly yours,
Janny

3 comments:

Deb said...

More proof positive that we're dumbing down society. You should see the letters my kid's high school (these are TEACHERS, for pity's sake!) sends home. Once I corrected one and wanted to send it back, but my killjoy family wouldn't let me. Pikers.

Janny said...

I would have sent back the letter when they weren't looking. :-)

The sad part about this is, this isn't a recent phenomenon or part of the recent dumbing-down, either. I can vividly remember signs in grocery stores with this very error in them, from my childhood. I had to wonder if I was learning this right, how THOSE people didn't!

The Grammarian About Whom Your Mother Warned You

Patty said...

I also find it amusing when they use quotation marks to emphasize something. "New" management. As if it isn't really new, but more sarcastically so. LOL!