Friday, January 24, 2014

Apostrophes apostrophes apostrophes!

This email arrived in my inbox this week, advertising a seminar at which I could learn "best practices" in internal communications. Given that the email contains two apostrophe errors in the first couple of lines, I'm not going to put too much stock in the sender's expertise in best communication practices.



Error #1: "employee's attention"

The apostrophe before the "s" indicates we're talking about the attention of one employee. In this case, though, we're most likely talking about multiple employees' attention -- so the apostrophe should follow the "s."

Error #2: "employees attention"

This is the same case as above -- just a different error, because the writer left the apostrophe off altogether.

Both sentences should say "...fighting to get your employees' attention."

This one is a little trickier:

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The writer knows to use an apostrophe after the "s" when showing possession of a plural word -- but there's an exception if the plural word doesn't end in "s."

If this was the babies' corner, or the girls' corner, or the owners' corner, this apostrophe would be fine. These are plural words that end in "s." But the plural noun "men" doesn't end in an "s," so we show possession the same way we would with a singular noun (by adding apostrophe "s"): men's corner.

This writer's problem is spelling:


Apostrophe "s" isn't used to pluralize nouns, though you see it all the time. For example:


While it might seem simple to just add the "s" to "tee" to pluralize it ("Custom Tees" is correct), the journalist above forgot the rule about pluralizing nouns that end in "y."

To pluralize "company," you'd remove the "y" and replace it with "ies" ("companies").

Here are last week's apostrophe resource links again:

For an easy-to-read-and-understand primer on how to use the apostrophe, Grammar Girl offers a great series of posts -- and when you need a quick reference with a laugh on the side, check out The Oatmeal.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

"Tenants lounge"


This is the first of what I suspect will be a series of posts on misused apostrophes.

My completely unscientific research suggests the apostrophe is the most commonly-misused punctuation mark (in Canada and the U.S., at least) -- and it's important to use your apostrophes correctly, because they play such an important role in communicating meaning.

Is this hotel lounge named for a family named "Tenants?" If so, the sign is fine.

If not, we likely need an apostrophe in the name.

If the lounge is intended for one tenant, it would more accurately be named "Tenant's Lounge" (apostrophe before the possessive "s"). It's the lounge meant for that one tenant.

If, as is more likely, the lounge is for any of the hotel's tenants to use, it should be called the "Tenants' Lounge" (apostrophe after the pluralizing "s"), since it's the lounge meant to be used by all the tenants (plural).

For an easy-to-read-and-understand primer on how to use the apostrophe, Grammar Girl offers a great series of posts -- and when you need a quick reference with a laugh on the side, check out The Oatmeal on the topic.

Thanks to Chris Lee for spotting this sign!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

"I could care less"




I often hear people saying they "could care less" about something, meaning they don't care at all.

"I could care less whether it's raining tomorrow; I'm wearing my shiny new rain boots even if the sun is shining."

The problem with this is that, if you could care less, you must care at least somewhat... in which case the expression contradicts what you mean. If you could care less, you could care anywhere from slightly to as much as one could possibly care about something.

If you want to communicate that you don't care about something, and you want to use this expression, say "I couldn't care less."

That makes it clear: you care as little as it is possible to care.