{"id":393,"date":"2008-10-21T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T18:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/recognize-your-employee%e2%80%99s-and-peers\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T19:21:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:21:00","slug":"recognize-your-employee%e2%80%99s-and-peers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/10\/recognize-your-employee%e2%80%99s-and-peers\/","title":{"rendered":"“… recognize your Employee\u2019s and Peers!!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this in a message from a corporation to its employees yesterday.<\/p>\n

Problems:<\/strong>
\n1. Two exclamation marks appear where only one should appear.
\n2. Common nouns are capitalized even though they should not be.
\n3. An apostrophe appears where it does not belong.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\nThe corporate message encouraged readers to nominate others for recognition.<\/p>\n

The full sentence was “Please be sure to recognize your Employee\u2019s and Peers!!”<\/p>\n

One problem with this sentence is the second exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, as if the first exclamation mark were insufficient.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine putting two periods at the end of a sentence? That would be nonsensical, right? Putting two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence is just as nonsensical.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English.<\/p>\n

Another problem is the capitalization of the two common nouns. There is nothing special about an “employee” or a “peer” that requires capitalization in this sentence.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this also seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English, as if a huge contingency of Germans had moved to the U.S. and started to misapply the German approach to capitalization to all nouns in English.<\/p>\n

The third problem is the most glaring. An apostrophe was inserted with the pluralization of “employee”, which is incorrect.<\/p>\n

Solution:<\/strong>
\n“… recognize your employees and peers!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw this in a message from a corporation to its employees yesterday. Problems: 1. Two exclamation marks appear where only one should appear. 2. Common nouns are capitalized even though they should not be. 3. An apostrophe appears where it does not belong. 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