Archive: Opinions

EditorialAt risk of stepping on the toes of Jim Evans, our wonderful English language columnist (see SMART TALK on our Entertainment page), I'm going to rant about one of my pet peeve's, something that is getting worse and worse as far as I can tell.  Did you notice it in the previous sentence?  There should not be an apostrophe in "peeves."

We are being overrun by rampant apostrophes.  Peeves is the plural of peeve (and by the way, 'is' is correctly used in this case because it refers to 'the plural,' which is singular in this case.  Is that confusing enough?)  If I were referring to the peeves themselves it would have to be 'are.'  If I were to put the apostrophe in Peeve's would have to be followed by something that belongs to Peeve, perhaps Joe Peeve or Sally Peeve.  Or I could use it to say that Joe or Sally is something as in Peeve's a poor speller.  Especially if they write, "We are expert's in our field."  If wrote that their field isn't writing, that's for sure!

These incorrectly used apostrophes have been showing up on shop signs, menus, banners, in written articles.  You see them a LOT on home made signs.  I haven't seen one in sky writing, but I'll bet they are used a lot.  As I've noticed these little curvy punctuation marks invading like ants at a picnic I have wondered why it is happening.  The other day I think I came up with the answer: spell checkers.

Spell checkers have made us stupid about spelling in the same way that calculators have made us idiots about math.  If you have ever stood in the grocery line while an employee tries to deal with a product that has no bar code on it -- or try to figure out how much change to give you when the cash register doesn't calculate it for them -- then you know what I mean.

Most people who use spell checkers know about the to, too, two conundrum.  All three are spelled correctly, but if you use the wrong one in a sentence spell checkers can't figure that out.  But it is two easy... I mean too easy to let the spell checker work its magic and not bother to proofread.  I think that insidiously validates wrong spelling and word usage.  And there is nothing worse than an insidious validation, let me tell you!

So next time you are making a hand made sign or writing something for your Web site or something else that people might see, check for apostrophes.  If one is there make sure it really belongs there.  If you are trying to say that there is more than one of something take that apostrophe out for me.  It's the editor in me -- it makes me crazy.

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