Well I didn't make it to church this morning. Same old reason as all the other times when I said I'd go to church but didn't. Too damn early. This also means that I didn't 'score'. Oh well...
I did however go on the walk. When I said it was in the Peak District it seems I was sort of lieing. Almost the whole walk had us with a constant view of the University of Derby.
If you're interested we followed walk 49 from the excellent book, 50 Walks in the Peak District. I took a few photos and I've put these on the gallery for you all to admire.
When we had finished the walk we all went for a lovely pub dinner in 'The Mundy Arms', in Mackworth. I was less than impressed with the crap and sometimes ironic misuse of the apostrophe on their Christmas meal board!
What do you think? (click on the photo for a bigger, and then a bigger still version) Count the misuses (or lack of use) of the apostophe, see how many you can find! I get five. Bloody good place though.
I make it 4. Depends if you talking about season or seasons, in which case it would be 5.
Posted by: Rob on October 17, 2004 10:48 PMI took it as the greetings belonging to the season. Is that what you meant?
I think it's 4 out of a total of 6 being misused.
A quick glance at "Eats Shoots & Leaves" (which happens to be lying around the place...) shows that the apostrophe can indicate the possessive in a singular noun by being placed before the final s. As season is singular in this case, "Season's Greetings" would be correct.
Maybe you should go an join them for Christma's and give them a copy of that book?
Posted by: Joe on October 17, 2004 11:01 PMI make it 5, being:
"...welcome's you..."
"...Mundy Arm's"
"...greeting's"
"Log Fire's"
"Dont be..."
That'll be the five I saw too.
Posted by: Ed on October 17, 2004 11:20 PMActually, "Mundy Arm's" might potentially be alright (that is to say "This place that belongs to The Mundy Arm")... although that would make "Mundy Arms" on the other side wrong, so still 5.
Posted by: Owen on October 17, 2004 11:20 PMFor that to apply, you pretty much have to assume that "The Munday Arm" is the name of an individual (which it could be, but it isn't that likely!). For instance, lets assume the pub was called Dave, and was owned by Dave. In that case "...welcomes you to Dave's" is definately okay. It gets a little icky with company names though...
"...welcomes you to Maplin Electronic's" - no definately not
"...welcomes you to Maplin's" - possibly alright? The name of the company is Maplin, not Maplins, afterall.
"...welcomes you to PC World's" - nope, not unless PC World had a thing ("...welcomes you to PC World's thing").
Ooh, I missed the lack of one in "Dont". Total of 5 mistakes then :-)
Posted by: Joe on October 18, 2004 9:48 AMGreat one today in my writing workshop (bearing in mind we're supposed to be pros)...
"eighty's and ninety's"
Impressively bad.
Posted by: cows on October 20, 2004 2:45 PMThat's prolly because people write "the 80's and 90's" when talking about the two decades... I that gets on my nerves too. My theory is that it should be "the '80s and '90s", where the ' is showing where you have killed the '19'.
Joe or anyone else with the book, what does Eats, Shoots and Leaves have to say about decades?
I'll have to check later :-)
The one that always annoys me is the roundabout at J23 of the M1 (A453/A46/M1), where "Nottingham" is abbreviated to "N'ottm".
Posted by: Joe on October 20, 2004 4:04 PMAccording to the book, 80's and 90's used to be the approved way, and still is in America. I prefer '80s though :-)
Posted by: Joe on October 21, 2004 9:50 AMInteresting.
Even though the site below (chapter 8 of "The United States Government Printing Office Style Manual 2000") suggests '70s etc as bad examples and should be replaced with 'seventies', but it still puts the apostophe at the front, just like with "Class of '98" etc. There's no example of "80's" or "90's". Hmmm... why put an ' before a decade of an age that someone could be in anyway?
http://nsdsa.phdnswc.navy.mil/tmmp/styleman2000/chapter_txt-8.html
The "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America" (http://www.elca.org/os/stylenew.html) says that:
"Never use apostrophe before "s" in '90s when referring to years (NOT 90's). Use apostrophe before year to indicate deletion of "19," as in '90s."
Loads of sites say you shouldn't remove the 19, or should write it out in words.
Looks like the times are changing and the Americans are also changing to make things look 'right'.