Wednesday, June 24, 2009

A Lesson on Apostrophes

I hate to do this to my readers, but even more, I hate to see apostrophes used incorrectly.
I saw a sign yesterday that said, "Kid's Eat Free."
There are only two ways to use apostrophes: when you are combining two words and when you are saying something belongs to someone.
"Kid's Eat Free" is not one of those ways.
If you translate "Kid's Eat Free," you are either reading, "Kid Is Eat Free" or "The Eat, Which Belongs to the Kids, is Free."
If you want to shorten, "It Is," you can write (or type) "It's." If you want to shorten "Let Us," you can write, "Let's."
If you want to say, "The dog, which belonged to MrsDartt, barked a lot," you can write, "MrsDartt's dog barked a lot."
You do NOT say, "All Car's On Sale" (I really saw that on TV), or "Wednesday's at 10 p.m." (I really saw that on TV, too). You do not use apostrophes when things are plural.
This is a huge pet peeve of mine.
"Misuse of apostrophes is a huge pet peeve of MrsDartt's."
I am not going to talk about this again.
"I'm not going to talk about this again."
It just bugs me when a company pays for advertising and then improperly uses apostrophes.
(Not "It just bug's me when a company pay's for advertising and then improperly uses apostrophe's." There should be NO apostrophes in that sentence.)
Okay, that is it for now. That's it for now. No more grammar lessons (see, no apostrophe!) until the next time I see something that really peeves me. Could be tomorrow.

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