100 thoughts on “More “grocer’s apostrophes””

    1. Butbutbut…as Pinker and other staunch anti-prescriptivists always say: language evolves. I’m sure Pinker’s book doesn’t condemn the grocer’s apostrophe as a mistake, rather simply acknowledges that as soon as the majority of people use it to form plural’s, it will be correct.

      (Of course that was sarcasm, you guy’s)

      1. The sarcasm is fair enough, but this is such a widespread misrepresentation of the science of linguistics, that (at the risk of being accused of lacking a sense of humor) I think it’s worth countering.

        Geoff Pullum does it particularly well here, “Everything Is Correct vs Nothing Is Relevant”
        http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html

        In a nutshell, descriptivism does NOT say that language has no rules. It just says that the rules are deduced empirically. That’s how all science works. It’s important to be clear that there is not any tension in linguistics between descriptivism and prescriptivism. Prescriptivism is not part of the science of linguistics, it is (at best) arbitrary stylistic advice.

        1. Linguists tend to be descriptive (it’s the nature of the discipline) while grammarians tend to be both prescriptive and proscriptive.

          “In a nutshell, descriptivism does NOT say that language has no rules.”

          True. It only provides a portrait of a language at the time of observation, as does any other empiric evaluation.

          1. Linguists are scientists. I’m not sure what “grammarian” means, but it’s not generally used to describe linguists who specialize in grammar, so I guess you mean (more-or-less) schoolteachers? In any event, there is simply no such thing as a prescriptivist scientist, it’s an oxymoron.

            Provided that “grammarians” or other prescriptivists couch their stylistic recommendations appropriately, there’s no tension. The “art of style” in writing is a perfectly valid and worthwhile pursuit.

            The difficulty arises only when a stylistic “rule” is presented by a prescriptivist as being absolute or authoritative, deriving from some non-arbitrary source of knowledge. And the reason for sense-of-humor failures on the topic is that prescriptivism has an ugly historic association with social elitism.

          2. I hate when getting your facts or spelling or grammar right is considered “elitist”. It’s the whole Joe the Plumber/Tea Party thing in the US and “Ford Nation” in Toronto. Should it be a matter of pride to be ignorant?

          3. The point is that what is “right” in spelling and grammar often just means “not speaking the dialect of the in-group” (for various values of in-group, depending on context).

            I will as politely as possible observe that you are at risk of come across as proud of your own ignorance of language, and suggest that a good starting point would be Stephen Pinker’s “The Language Instinct”.

          4. I have read the Pinker (Pinkah to this group:-) or is it Pinkeh?). As much as I admire and like him, I don’t agree with him 100%. Sure, I might sound like a pedant in some groups, but I “caint hardly” begin fixin’ ta talk like an uneducated person just to make people comfortable. Would you rather sound like Hitchens ( oh, that I could speak 1/10 as well) or Dubya? Bill Clinton or Sarah Palin? How is it elitist to aspire to speak and write eloquently?

          8. @Merilee

            You persist with a straw man. Nobody is arguing that there is no such thing as eloquent or stylish use of language. The point is, you must remember that “eloquence” in language is directly analogous to beaauty/greatness in music, say. It’s a question of aesthetics, not of “correctness”.

            In the dialect of English that you grew up with, there are people who speak & write poorly, and people who speak & write fluently and eloquently.

            But remember that African American Vernacular English, for example, is just as rich – it has it’s own set of different rules – which are quite as subtle and complex as the rules of your dialect, but are just different. And among AAVE speakers there is the same range of fluency and eloquence. It’s perfectly reasonably to say that a particular native AAVE speaker does not speak or write well in his dialect.

            What is NOT ok is to claim that somebody is not speaking “properly” just because they speak AAVE and not YOUR dialect.

            A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

          9. I agree that AAVE is a very rich and appealing dialect, but do you disagree that there is a Standard English which it is appropriate to learn if you are going to write , say, scholarly papers or editorials in The NYT? There was a big push on teaching Ebonics a number of years ago, but was that really doing the kids a favor out in the wider world? The Viennese dialect is quite charming, but I would think that Austrians would learn standard German if they were to communicate beyond their cohort.

          10. And, to be less polite about it:

            Prescriptivists who can’t grasp the point like to fall back on “well, yes, but I’m just a pedantic curmudgeon. I know I’m inflexible, but I’m just a stickler for correctness.”

            The bad kind of prescriptivism is not “correctness” at all, it’s a mark of parochial ignorance in someone who does not understand the wonderful variety and richness of language.

          11. I love the variety of language, and having lived in the US, UK, and Canada, take great pleasure in all the different Englishes (not to mention the Kiwi and Aussie versions). I’ve also learned several foreign tongues and love how they often intermingle. This does not prevent me from preferring “could hardly” to “couldn’t hardly”, or “couldn’t care less” to “could care less”. Is it prescriptive to prefer 2+2=4 to 2+2= whatever you feel it should equal? I am far from being a curmudgeon, or even a curmudgeoness, but I do appreciate English (and other languages) elegantly spoken (which does not preclude lots of wordplay, as is often seen, and enjoyed, on this site.)

          12. Must say I’ve never been called parochial before…but I am pretty thick-skinned. Where do you/have you lived?

          13. You keep restating the same straw man over and over again in a different way. Nobody is challenging the validity of aesthetic preferences in language or the value of eloquence in language.

            I have explained what IS the problem with the ugly absolutist incarnations of prescriptivism, and you keep ignoring that.

            You’ve already conflated subjective aesthetic views of language with “facts”, and now you explicitly claim that your trivial subjective preference for one idiom over another is equivalent to a statement that 2+2=4. Can you really not see the difference?

          14. Apology accepted, Ralph, but I really do not believe that all my statements were setting up straw men, or trivial. Clearly a choice of words is not exactly the same as truth in math, but speaking and writing clearly and so that people understand you is not being elitist. You never answered my question about whether or not you believed there was, or should be, such a thing as standard English. I guess I’ll just shut up now. Us this the alpha male syndrome that Diana was referring to?

          15. Merilee, I feel we should respect Jerry’s wish to let this drop. Another time, perhaps.

          18. Upon rereading, I see that I was far too abrasive and personal. Apologies to all, and to Merilee in particular.

        2. You’ll get no accusations from me. I regularly have to quell my own pedantic instincts when faced with only moderately successful attempts at humor, like mine.

          But your comment does beg the question that, for all intensive purposes, we can certainly make due without unwarranted prescriptivism. Irregardless, I could care less.

          1. Ironically, “beg the question” is a clear case of something that HAS, to the chagrin of pedantic prescriptivists, evolved to mean “raise the question” in normal use. And for good reason, since this sense of “beg” is archaic. For clarity, philosophers and logicians are going to have to find another phrase to mean “assume the conclusion”. How about “assume the conclusion”?

          6. Oh, good. I created them on my iPad but they only showed up as little squares on my Mac. I do see that they are here on my iPad. Such important considerations.

          12. I used to like Chrome for pushing articles to a reading list, but don’t do that too much anymore. So I guess you’re saying the emoticons don’t work w Chrome on the Mac?

  2. OMG my brain just gave me a little chemical punishment just reading that thing!

  3. Have read a few reviews of Pinker’s book, but not the book itself, and it seems clear that he doesn’t have much time for the self-appointed language police. Nor does he fear for the quality of the written word nowadays. He points to bl*gs and Amazon reviews as examples of a general good standard of writing.

  4. This sign also says that there was no one at the sign-making department (manager(s) of the sign makers) capable of seeing the errors either.

    As we ponder what the hell is goin’ on in this world for the upmteenth time, we must take this fact into consideration.

    The inmates are loose and their keepers are are now their cooks.

    1. That’s just a printout that’s laminated and zip-tied to the bars. It might even just be a residence rather than in front of a business.

  6. The grocer’s apostrophe is one of my all-time most annoying pet peeve’s. Another is the use of “why” after “reason” when “reason” is being used as a noun instead of a verb.

      1. But the whole point of language peeves is that they’re immune to reason and evidence!

          1. Well, if I started posting comments in Elizabethan English (since, by your logic, if “reason why” is good enough for Shakespeare, I have no alternative but to accept it) you might not call me a pretentious asshole (’cause that would be against da roolz), but you’d probably be thinking it.

            For that matter, why don’t we go back to the language of Chaucer or Cotton Vitellius A.XV?

          2. Verily!

            But, in truth, I’m struggling to find “the reason why” objectionable, even for reasons of grammatical pedantry.

            It feels like a natural alternative to “the reason (that)” given the use of “the person who” instead of “the person (that)”.

            • Jerry Coyne is the person [—|that|who] I gave my cat to.

            • Jerry Coyne’s book is the reason [—|that|why] I think evolution is true.

            /@

          3. Jerry Coyne is WHOM I gave my cat to. 😉

            In any case, the “rule” against using “that” for “who” is another prescriptivist superstition. And speaking of “whom,” I often find that “that” is a great choice when “whom” would be grammatically correct but I don’t want to sound stuffy.

            Of the following grammatically correct sentences, I much prefer the first two to the others:

            -The person I gave my cat to is Jerry Coyne.

            -The person that I gave my cat to is Jerry Coyne.

            -The person whom I gave my cat to is Jerry Coyne.

            -The person to whom I gave my cat is Jerry Coyne.

            And depending on context, the more direct “I gave my cat to Jerry Coyne” might be best of all, methinks.

          5. – Jerry can’t have the cat I don’t have.
            – Jerry can’t have the cat that I don’t have.
            – Jerry can’t have the cat which I don’t have.
            – Jerry can’t have the cat which isn’t here.
            – Look elsewhere for a cat, Jerry.

            I, too, prefer my last construction.

            😉

          6. @Ant:

            I agree with you and Pinker that what you want to stress is key.

            Yeah, “whom” is something of a “skunked word,” as Bryan Garner would say. In formal writing, I’m sure never to use “who” where “whom” would be correct, but I’ll often reword so that I can avoid using “whom” altogether. (Substituting “that” works in some situations.)

          7. On which note, I should say that I wasn’t putting any of my examples forward as the most elegant way of expressing the thought. I like Pinker’s models for understanding the clearest sentence structure.

            /@

          8. I don’t think whom always sounds pretentious. While I would never say Whom ya gonna call( Ghostbusters!), or Whom are you going with, I would ask With whom? rather than With who ( which grates…). A rather annoying HS Englush teacher used to overcompensate by saying Whom is it:-(

          9. PS. Additionally:

            • Jerry Coyne is who I gave my cat to.

            • Jerry Coyne’s book is why I think evolution is true.

            English has so many ways of saying the same thing!

          11. That reminds me of a Who’s On First moment I once had. A song by Yes came on my car radio, and I had this dialogue with a friend who was riding with me.

            Friend: (Indicating the radio) Who is that?

            Me: Yes.

            Friend: The Who?

            Me: No.

            Friend: Well, then, who is it?

            Me: Yes.

            Friend: What are you trying to pull?

            Me: (Annoyed) The song is by Yes.

            Friend: Oh.

            Me: And don’t even ask me about anything by Guess Who.

          13. That band Take That that performed last night … !

            /@

            PS. Which of course reminds me of (sans punctuation): John where Peter had had had had had had had had had had had the approval of the teacher.

          16. That’s an interesting response to my conciliatory “Different strokes.”

            Of course, the examples in the links I provided aren’t limited to Elizabethan English, and you’re also putting words into my mouth.

            Out of curiosity, did you object to my own “good reasons why” above? I personally prefer the inclusion of “why” in that sentence.

      1. In the last few years I’ve been noticing a lot of doubles ises. “The thing is is…”.
        Perhaps people used to say “The thing is that…”?

  7. I don’t understand the first line of text. The message is completely contained in the subsequent three lines of text. What is the function of that first line?

      1. I’m now wondering if it is meant to indicate that the railing is being worked on. That would be a really spectacularly colossal failure of grammar.

        1. Yes, that’s what it means. “Works” is a pretty common expression in the UK, which can mean “place of work” (usually a factory) or “pieces of work to be carried out” – as in “roadworks”. Without the apostrophes I’d be happy to describe it as a local idiom. (With the apostrophes it’s a local idiot?)

          1. Yes, for this native UK English speaker, “Works” in this context is synonymous to “Maintenance”.

      2. //prescriptivism

        No, this is standard English, as spoken by all intelligent people in the civilized world.

        It’s just quaintly idiomatic that your local American dialects don’t use the word with its true range of valid meanings.

        //end prescriptivism

    2. One imagines a similar sign posted at the Works Department:

      Railing’s to Work’s
      Message received
      Over and out

  9. I figured it out – since this person was producing this sign using letterpress printing plates, he/she didn’t have the lead for S (it usually has falled to the floor) but had one for ‘S.

    I hate when that happen’s

    1. ‘Works to railings’ makes perfect sense in the UK. Substitute maintenance for works. We used to have a government department called the Ministry of Works responsible for managing government buildings.

  12. The one that really get’s me is this one. It seem’s to me we’re seeing more and more of that as time goe’s by.

  15. A grocer walk into a bar during happy hour and has two drink’s for the price of one.
    (Sorry, I just love “walks into a bar” jokes.)

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