I fear the intrusive apostrophe is permanently with us on a grand scale, aided and abetted by the fact that spellcheckers don’t appear to be fully cognisant with the rules; while you can imagine a junior in charge of a one-off marketing poster (or a journalist, as you have frequently pointed out) to make the occasional slip, there are numerous examples to be found even on product packaging (looking at you, Johnson&Johnson) and in printed official notices and government handouts.
Thanks to Little Tin God syndrome, there is a tendency even among people who should know better to bow to the machine’s judgment in either ignoring an apostrophe error or - worse - inserting one inappropriately (as my iPad occasionally attempts to do when confronted with a grammatically complex sentence).
There's also the question of creeping Americanisms - " for free" FFS! It's either free or it isn't. I suppose we're supposed to think ourselves lucky that they didn't include "gotten" . . .
A case for the Association of Abolition of Abherrant Apostrophes, I fear.
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I fear the intrusive apostrophe is permanently with us on a grand scale, aided and abetted by the fact that spellcheckers don’t appear to be fully cognisant with the rules; while you can imagine a junior in charge of a one-off marketing poster (or a journalist, as you have frequently pointed out) to make the occasional slip, there are numerous examples to be found even on product packaging (looking at you, Johnson&Johnson) and in printed official notices and government handouts.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Little Tin God syndrome, there is a tendency even among people who should know better to bow to the machine’s judgment in either ignoring an apostrophe error or - worse - inserting one inappropriately (as my iPad occasionally attempts to do when confronted with a grammatically complex sentence).
There's also the question of creeping Americanisms - " for free" FFS! It's either free or it isn't. I suppose we're supposed to think ourselves lucky that they didn't include "gotten" . . .
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