Kirk Mahoney . com

I saw this on the back of a bank-by-mail envelope from my credit union.

Problems:
An apostrophe is missing from the contraction, and the verb used as an adjective should not be capitalized.

Explanation:
Whoever wrote what is printed on the back of the envelope was trying to use the contracted, everyday-speech form of “I am”.

Unfortunately, the contraction “Im” lacks the required apostrophe.

I believe that this is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis.

It’s simpler to write “Im” than to write “I’m” (two keystrokes vs. three keystrokes).

I also believe that the increasingly common practice of dropping required apostrophes has been influenced by people’s experience with text messaging.

• Given the typical limit of 160 characters in a text message, every character is precious, so dropping required apostrophes seems to many like a reasonable price to pay.
• Also, text messaging on most cellular telephones, which don’t have full QWERTY keyboards, is tedious, so dropping required apostrophes lets users of the simpler phones avoid this tedium.

The other problem is that “Save” — a verb used as an adjective to modify “envelopes” — is capitalized when it should not be.

Unnecessary capitalization has become another common English blunder.

I see this unnecessary capitalization more with nouns than with adjectives.

Maybe American English is becoming more like German, or maybe American English speakers are losing their confidence in how to capitalize and therefore randomly capitalize words that don’t require it.

Solution:
“I’m out of save/pay-by-mail envelopes.”

I saw this yesterday on a San Quentin State Prison sign shown during an MSNBC television program.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe appears where it should not.

Explanation:
“APPEAL’S” of what?

The apostrophe in “APPEAL’S” should not be there.

The sign maker was trying to refer to the plural of the noun “APPEAL”.

He or she instead made the sign maker’s common blunder of inserting a possessive apostrophe when pluralizing a noun.

Maybe sign makers just love to create apostrophes?

Solution:
“INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES UNIT & APPEALS”

I saw this on the back of a delivery van two days ago.

Problem:
The sign writer converted a singular noun into a possessive instead of into a plural noun.

Explanation:
Book authors such as Lynne Truss are bang on when they say that sign writers have a propensity to put apostrophes where they do not belong.

The sign writer for the delivery van is guilty of this offense.

The sign writer either should have left the noun in singular form (“DRIVER”) or should have used the plural form (“DRIVERS”).

The writer probably wanted to be somewhat generic — and not pick on the driver of the van to which the sign is attached — and use the plural form of “DRIVER”.

One humorous aside: There was no telephone number to call for reporting a lack of courtesy!

Solution:
“REPORT DISCOURTEOUS DRIVERS TO”

I often hear this, although I certainly can’t hear the possessive apostrophe.

Problem:
These are mispronunciations of a popular February holiday, and one is missing the required possessive apostrophe.

Explanation:
The person whose day is celebrated on February 14 is St. Valentine.

So the proper name of the holiday is “St. Valentine’s Day” or more simply “Valentine’s Day” — not “Valentimes Day” or “Valentime’s Day” or even “Valentines Day”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got the indicated numbers of matches:

• “Valentimes Day” — 18,800 matches
• “Valentime’s Day” — 7,570 matches
• “Valentines Day” — 1,560,000 matches
• “Valentine’s Day” — 10,800,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly by a ratio of 6.8:1, which is not good!

I believe that the use of “Valentimes” or “Valentime’s” instead of “Valentine’s” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It is simpler to pronounce the “m” sound in “Valentimes” or “Valentime’s” than to pronounce the “n” sound in “Valentines” or “Valentine’s”.

I believe that the omission of the possessive apostrophe in the otherwise-correct “Valentines Day” is also consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the apostrophe than to include it, and this holiday is only one of many examples in which writers omit required possessive apostrophes.

Solution:
“Valentine’s Day”

This appeared on a motivational poster for teenagers.

Problem:
An apostrophe is required when contracting two words into one word.

Explanation:
“Whether you think you are wrong, …” would be the formal equivalent of what the poster writer wanted to say.

As I’ve written (Did you see the contraction that I just wrote?!), many people often confuse “your” and the contraction of “you are” to the point of writing “your” instead of the contraction.

A contraction requires an apostrophe to signify the removal of one or more letters in the formation of the contraction. For example, the apostrophe in “I’ve” signifies the removal of “ha” in the formation of the contraction from “I” and “have”.

In other words, an apostrophe must appear where one has removed the letter(s) to form the contraction.

Solution:
“Whether you think you’re wrong, …”

I often hear people say this.

Problems:
1. A possessive apostrophe-S (‘s) is missing.
2. The noun makes much more sense in singular form.

Explanation:
Even in speech, one can hear when a possessive apostrophe-S is missing.

The English noun “sake” (not the Japanese noun) means interest, benefit, advantage, motive, purpose or cause. For example, “for the sake of Jim” means for the benefit of Jim.

We can rewrite “for the sake of Jim” (“for the benefit of Jim”) as “for Jim’s sake” (“for Jim’s benefit”). It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say “for Jim’s sakes” (plural). That would be analogous to saying “for Jim’s benefits”, which most people would not say because one vague, all-encompassing benefit is enough!

Apparently, the original expression was “Oh, for God’s sake!” This expression got softened to “Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”, which got converted into the problematic expression.

I believe that “Oh, for Heaven sakes” supports my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to say “Oh, for Heaven sakes” than to say “Oh, for Heaven’s sake”; saying the latter requires one to pause between “Heaven’s” and “sake” so that the listener hears the two S sounds.

Letting the expression devolve further, we get the original, problematic expression: “Oh, for Heaven sakes!” It’s as if the speaker is indicating that he knows that an S sound belongs somewhere, so he puts it at the end of the expression, where it sounds as if it might belong.

Solution:
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”

I saw this on a luggage tag at O’Hare airport.

Problem:
An apostrophe appears where it should not.

Explanation:
An apostrophe should not be used to pluralize a family name. The brightly colored luggage tag was meant to call the reader’s attention to the fact that the luggage belonged to the Nelson family.

Use of the definite article on the luggage tag told me that the family name was Nelson.

The plural of Nelson is Nelsons (not Nelson’s). For example, The Nelsons live in suburban Chicago.

If the luggage-tag writer had wanted to indicate that the luggage belonged to the Nelsons, then he could have written The Nelsons’. Note the possessive apostrophe after the pluralized family name.

Solution:
“The Nelsons”

I saw this at shop.wordpress.net/usa/t-shirts.

Problems:
1. An apostrophe is missing.
2. The modifiers of “T-Shirt” are in a confusing order.

Explanations:
1. The first problem is that the plural noun “Women” requires a possessive apostrophe followed by an “s” to indicate the possession of the “T-Shirt” by the women.

I believe that the absence of a required possessive apostrophe can be attributable to:

• A typographical error;
• Ignorance about possessive apostrophes.

Given how often I see “Mens” and “Womens” (instead of “Men’s” and “Women’s”) in department stores, I doubt that “A typographical error” applies to this situation.

That leaves us with “Ignorance about possessive apostrophes”. I believe that this ignorance is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to write possessive words without apostrophes than to write them with apostrophes.

I blogged about possessive apostrophes yesterday (“NEW YEARS EVE WITH CARSON DALY”), too. Maybe something is in the water for the holidays.

2. The second problem is that the modifiers of “T-Shirt” are in a confusing order. I doubt that the writer meant to refer to “Red Women”, but one could easily infer this from the current order of the modifiers. This is analogous to “Green Lady’s Handbag” (when what is meant is “Lady’s Green Handbag”).

The solution to this confusion is to start from scratch. We have a T-shirt. Most important, it comes from WordPress, so it’s a WordPress T-shirt (with the noun “WordPress” acting as an adjective to modify the noun “T-shirt”). It comes in red, so it’s a red WordPress T-shirt (with the adjective “red” modifying the noun phrase “WordPress T-shirt”). It’s for women, so we put the possessive “women’s” in front of red WordPress T-shirt to get the solution.

Solution:
“Women’s Red WordPress T-Shirt”

I saw this title repeatedly on an NBC television program last evening.

Problem:
An apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
There it was in all capital letters as we headed into the year 2008: a program title screaming to be scanned for errors. Sure enough, there was one.

The singular noun “YEAR” requires a possessive apostrophe followed by an “S” to indicate the possession of the “EVE” by the year. Another way to write this phrase is “EVE OF THE NEW YEAR …”.

I believe that the absence of a required possessive apostrophe can be attributable to:

1. A typographical error;
2. Ignorance about possessive apostrophes.

Given how bold the title was, I dismiss #1 for the program title. Surely someone at NBC would have caught the error, if she understood how to use possessive apostrophes.

That leaves us with #2 for the program title. I believe that this ignorance is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis. It’s simpler to write possessive words without apostrophes than to write them with apostrophes.

For help with apostrophes, I highly recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. Look here for other better-communication books.

Solution:
“NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH CARSON DALY”

I saw this in an official communication from the number-two executive at the world’s largest telecommunications company.

Problem:
An apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
The singular noun “world” requires a possessive apostrophe followed by an “s” to indicate the possession of the “best communications company” by the world. Another way to write this phrase is “Building the best communications company in the world …”.

Solution:
“Building the world’s best communications company …”