Catapostrophes

Send in your examples of the abuse of the apostrophe - or any other attack on our language. Scan the culprit and then send it in the body of an email (no file attachments). 

Please send only one example in each email and include details of where you found it, plus your name and country. We all suspect that the apostrophe is an endangered species wherever English is writ - this will be the living proof!  

OK ... take a deep breath and be prepared to swallow your ire as you read on ...

Don't forget to ask for the Apostrophe FAQ!  And if you haven't already done so, you can sign up for weekly Writing Tips delivered to you every Friday.

Catapostrophes ...

	It's (evidently) a photograph of our electricity meter cupboard. It's also worth noting that every cupboard/store-room in the building has the same error (e.g.. CLEANING CUP'B). Where I found it: in a luxury residential complex, London SE1 (England). (Simon Ree)
	The attached catapostrophe was seen in a stationery shop in York, where there were several of these posters exhorting schoolchildren and their parents to prepare for the coming term.  We can, I think, reasonably assume that the writer of these posters did not avail him or herself of the educational facilities on offer! You'd have thought that someone working in a stationery shop would at least have known how to spell the name of its business! (Richard)
	Stewart Wild (who sent this via Richard) says, Two more catapostrophes, both awful, this time from a company that ought to know better, advertising in the Sunday Times.
	From Richard English: Here's a picture of a 200 year old misspelled sign, seen at a recent Game Fair. There would only have been, of course, traps suitable for one man, not large enough to catch several men in the one trap! The correct wording would therefore have been "mantraps."
	Here is an example of probably the worst misuse of the apostrophe I have ever seen. The stall holder claimed that "pasty's was the correct spelling in Cornwall (a lie) but proved that he knew it wasn't by using the correct spelling elsewhere as shown below.
	The amazing thing is the sign writer (who repeated the "Pats Pasty's" error elsewhere on the van) was probably paid a lot of money!
	From Alan Palmer ... lots of business's!
	This leaflet appeared in our letter box yesterday ... A great course that sounds like fun ... and don't you love the gay abandon with which the writer approaches punctuation in general? In all fairness, I have to point out that the artist was not responsible for the advertisement!

From Stanley Simmons (Wales): I wanted to share this one with you. It was posted by our friendly and enterprising milkman, who is prepared to deliver a range of organic produce.

"I can also deliver over 2'500 organic lines daily."

Now that's a misuse of the apostrophe that's new to me!

From Richard English:

Northamptonshire County Council in England produce and distribute widely a list of the various markets held in the various major towns in the region.   It is entitled, in bold underlined type: Market Day's

Stephen Gard found this on the FAQ page on a writing website:

"We do not accept stories that have particularly bad spelling or are
very badly written which is most probably 70% of stories submitted (I'm
very sad to say), it's just far too time consuming to have to go through
and correct all the spelling. One of the things that really ticks me off
is when people constantly use "i" instead of "I" in capitols...... we
may also of thought your story was not appropriate or relevant to the
site.... Ok folks, That's about it for now.......thanks for taking the
time to read the FAQ's.....as more common questions come along I'll be
updating this page but for now it's ADIO'S AMIGO'S and happy hauntings!"

See more catapostrophes here

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