Related Articles

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  A Little Too Much Two-Buck Chuck

  732 readersFor me, the best apostrophe catastrophes are those committed by entities I don't like. I love to point out the flaws of Coors Light, the Lakers, or Valentine's Day, but I feel a little bit guilty posting punctuation errors from places I admire. Case in point: Trader Joe's. Oh how I love your

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  Kentucky American Is…

  1034 readersMark, who sent in this apostrophe catastrophe, thinks maybe there is only one Kentuckian with a disability.Well, if the inability to use proper punctuation counts as a disability, that one Kentuckian designed this logo. And doesn't the whole concept of Kentucky American's [sic] seem redundant?Thanks, Mark! Check out Mark's blog here.

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  Apostrophe in Mother’s Day

  3085 readersStyle guides traditionally call for the apostrophe in Mother's Day to be placed between the r and the s because the holiday is supposed to honor one's own mother. But in this day and age, should we rethink the apostrophe placement to accommodate nontraditional families? This cartoon from the New Yorker provides food for thought.Thanks

• Tangled Passages

  1315 readersA pileup of dashes and commas in a sentence should be a warning sign. Sometimes the punctuation itself is the source of the problem, leading to snarled syntax. In other cases, the commas and dashes are a symptom. As a sentence gets more and more convoluted, the writer desperately clutches at punctuation to hold it

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  Satanic Apostrophe Catastrophe

  1319 readersGlenn Danzig, I don't know a lot about religion, but isn't there only supposed to be one Satan?Clearly, the devil removed the apostrophe from this album cover. The wikipedia entry, and even the URL for the wikipedia entry, include the proper apostrophe...

• A Guide to Colloquial Contractions

  3896 readersLet’s talk about the dos and don’ts of contractions, ’k? (But first, this note: This punctuation mark is the same as the one used for apostrophes. However, if you use smart, or curly, quotes, your word processing program will probably incorrectly render an apostrophe not preceded by a letter — as in the last word in

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  Punctuation Is Powerful

  7495 readersThe image we published last Saturday was quite popular, so I decided to run another one this Saturday. The theme is the same: punctuation. For those who can’t see the image, here’s what it says: An English professor wrote the words: “A woman without her man is nothing” on the chalkboard he asked the students to punctuate it correctly. All

• 10 Websites and Blogs of Punctuation Protectors

  15710 readersIn honor of National Punctuation Day, commemorated on September 24 (you didn’t forget, did you?), here’s a directory of Web sites documenting, usually with photographs, egregious punctuation errors. First, by the way, note that the founder of National Punctuation Day, a freelance business-newsletter writer named Jeff Rubin, sponsors a Punctuation Paragraph Contest. The only rule is

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  San Francisco Happy Hour Apostrophe Catastrophe

  1852 readersThe Castro on a Sunday afternoon feels like an alternate universe in which everyone is attractive and stylish and goes dancing after brunch. But apparently afternoon cocktails may interfere with proper punctuation and spelling.Much like the diversity o...

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  Someone Will Be Atoning for This

  2707 readersJust in time for Yom Kippur, here's an apostrophe catastrophe from the Holy Land.Whoever messed up that ad should be racked with guilt. Sure, last year I ate a cheeseburger club on Yom Kippur and a lobster roll on Passover. And I'm 30 and not yet married to a doctor. But at least I use