{"id":859,"date":"2016-11-19T20:42:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T04:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kalev.org\/kblog\/?p=859"},"modified":"2016-11-19T22:44:53","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T06:44:53","slug":"there-is-a-scourge-in-this-world-what-scourge-the-scourge-that-is-grocers-apostrophes-which-are-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kalev.org\/kblog\/2016\/11\/19\/there-is-a-scourge-in-this-world-what-scourge-the-scourge-that-is-grocers-apostrophes-which-are-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"There is a scourge in this world! What scourge? The scourge that is grocers’ apostrophes<\/em>, which are the devil."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometime in the last 10 to 15 years, a horrible plague started reaching critical mass. What plague is that? The plague of people who for some reason have lost the ability to understand one of the very simplest rules of grammar ever, which is that you form the plural of a word by\u2014in general\u2014just adding an S to the end of said word.<\/p>\n

For example, one cat, two or more\u00a0cats<\/em>. \u00a0I ate some\u00a0apples<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So what are grocers’ apostrophes, you ask? Well, grocers’ apostrophes would be when you want to talk about more than one apostrophe and you, in a fit of stupendous idiocy, write about the\u00a0apostrophe’s<\/em> you are interested in talking about.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are actually people out there who think you form the plural by adding –‘s<\/em> to the end of the word you want to make plural. But as anyone with a Grade 4 education should<\/em> know, using apostrophe-S at the end of a word is how you form the\u00a0possessive<\/em>, not the plural.<\/p>\n

As in, what is Kalev‘s<\/strong><\/em> biggest grammar pet peeve? That is, the pet peeve that belongs to Kalev. ((That is a meta-rhetorical question, in case you were wondering. ?))<\/p>\n

Apparently this started with grocers, hence the name, who would handwrite signs such as\u00a0Apple’s 1\/- ((that’s one shilling))<\/em> a pound<\/em> or\u00a0Orange’s 1\/6<\/em> ((one shilling sixpence)) a pound<\/em>. I’m not sure it’s really fair to blame grocers for this but at least it’s a distinctive name.<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0slightly<\/em> forgivable when people do it for decades in numeral form or to make abbreviations plural. You have definitely seen, and have probably written yourself, the following:<\/p>\n