Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss Read Free Book Online Page A

England on the second Thursday of every month (Apostrophe Thursday). The present Apostropher Royal, Sir D’Anville O’M’Darlin’, concerns himself these days with such urgent issues as the tendency of “trendy publishers” to replace quotation marks with colons and dashes, the effect of which is that pairs of unwanted inverted commas can be illegally shipped abroad, split down the middle to form low-grade apostrophes and sold back to an unwary British public.
    Do people other than professional writers care, though? Well, yes, and I have proof in heaps. As I was preparing for this book, I wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph , hoping to elicit a few punctuation horror stories, and it was like detonating a dam. Hundreds of emails and letters arrived, all of them testifying to the astonishing power of recallwe sticklers have when things have annoyed us (“It was in 1987, I’ll never forget, and it said “CREAM TEA’S”); and also to the justifiable despair of the well educated in a dismally illiterate world. Reading the letters, I was alternately thrilled that so many people had bothered to write and sunk low by such overwhelming evidence of Britain’s stupidity and indifference. The vast majority of letters concerned misplaced apostrophes, of course, in potato’s and lemon’s . But it was interesting, once I started to analyse and sort the examples, to discover that the greengrocer’s apostrophe formed just one depressing category of the overall, total, mind-bogglingly depressing misuse of the apostrophe. Virtually every proper application of this humble mark utterly stumps the people who write to us officially, who paint signs, or who sell us fruit and veg. The following is just a tiny selection of the examples I received:
     
    Singular possessive instead of simple plural (the “greengrocer’s apostrophe”):
    Trouser’s reduced
    Coastguard Cottage’s
    Next week: nouns and apostrophe’s! (BBC website advertising a grammar course for children)
     
    Singular possessive instead of plural possessive:
    Pupil’s entrance (on a very selective school, presumably)
    Adult Learner’s Week (lucky him)
    Frog’s Piss (French wine putting unfair strain on single frog)
    Member’s May Ball (but with whom will the member dance?)
    Nude Reader’s Wives (intending “Readers’ Nude Wives”, of course, but conjuring up an interesting picture of polygamous nude reader attended by middle-aged women in housecoats and fluffy slippers)
     
    Plural possessive instead of singular possessive:
    Lands’ End (mail-order company which roundly denies anything wrong with name)
    Bobs’ Motors
     
    No possessive where possessive is required:
    Citizens Advice Bureau
    Mens Toilets
    Britains Biggest Junction (Clapham)
     
    Dangling expectations caused by incorrect pluralisation:
    Pansy’s ready (is she?)
    Cyclist’s only (his only what?)
    Please replace the trolley’s (replace the trolley’s what?)
     
    and best of all:
     
    Nigger’s out (a sign seen in New York, under which was written, wickedly: “But he’ll be back shortly”)
     
    Unintentional sense from unmarked possessive:
    Dicks in tray (try not to think about it)
    New members welcome drink (doubtless true)
    Someone knows an apostrophe is required . . . but where, oh where?
    It need’nt be a pane (on a van advertising discount glass)
    Ladie’s hairdresser
    Mens coat’s
    Childrens’ education . . . (in a letter from the head of education at the National Union of Teachers)
    The Peoples Princess’ (on memorial mug)
    Freds’ restaurant
     
    Apostrophes put in place names/proper names:
    Dear Mr Steven’s
    XMA’S TREES
    Glady’s (badge on salesgirl)
    Did’sbury
     
    It’s or Its’ instead of Its:
    Hundreds of examples, many from respectable National Trust properties and big corporations, but notably:
    Hot Dogs a Meal in Its’ Self (sign in Great Yarmouth)
    Recruitment at it’s best (slogan of employment agency)
    “ . . . to welcome you to the British