Mistake's Using Apostrophe's

Why?  Why do so many people think that adding an s automatically requires the addition of an apostrophe?  It just doesn't make sense.  Plurality and possession are fairly basic writing skills to master.  Still, adding apostrophes to words that are intended to be merely plural seems to be a tremendously widespread problem.

Expert's only what?  What does the expert own only one of?  Possibly an exclamation point.  And that's it, right there: the expert's only exclamation point.  Definitely worthy of a permanent sign, don't you think?  And a lovely sign, too: complete with some simple graphics and a little graffiti.  Nice.

 

I won't go into the superfluous use of quotation marks, but apparently the margarita here has $1,99 Mon to Thurs (or some other days).  But only with your dinner (or something rather unlike a dinner).  To be fair, I'm fairly certain that the writer of this sign may not speak English as a first language.

Orange peel aroma's what?  Aroma?  And it is equally enjoyable on it is own.  Yeeaahhhhh.  And don't get me started on the lack of a terminal comma and the weird sentence fragment that lacks parallel structure.

I'm guessing that the sign writer couldn't recall the spelling rule for changing y to ie when adding s, so he or she just added an apostrophe.  Of course, maybe the writer just doesn't know how to pluralize anything: product wasn't pluralized at all.  Not even incorrectly.

Sometimes there just isn't anything to say.

In need of divine intervention

Historically speaking, there are a number of things that have been done in the name of God that weren't very, um, godly.  And while a confusion of homophones certainly doesn't rank up there with any sort of religious war, it's definitely bad:

At least it has some rhythm and meter, eh?

Let's hope it's a joke.

I can't recall exactly where I found this little clipping--online somewhere--but I hope it's a joke.  I hope Lynzee Stauss is a budding satirist still trying to get a grip on a difficult genre.  Or that she's not a real person, and this is all faked.

Wow.  There are feminists planning rallies against this little op-ed or rolling over in their graves as we speak.  Sorry, ladies. 

So many errors.  Let me explain.  No, no.  There is too much; let me sum up.

Paragraph 1: shifts in person, pronoun-antecedent agreement, failure to use an apostrophe with a contraction, misplaced modifier, spelling issues

Paragraph 2: (Oh, crap! The whole rest of the article is the second paragraph.)  failure to divide paragraphs, pronoun-antecedent agreement, awkward construction, shifts in person, spelling issues, confusion of because and cause, misplaced modifiers, failure to hyphenate multiple-word adjectives, general comma issues, sentence fragment

I'm tempted at this point to rail against the message of the article, but I think that is done so well by the writing itself that it's truly unnecessary for me to do it (even though I really, really want to). 

Okay.  My blood pressure is coming back into the borderline range again.  I'll be fine.  Really.

Whoa.  Where are my beta blockers? 

I truly hope this has been photoshopped or something.  Surely no one would misspell something in 6-foot-tall letters, right?  Especially a word that is only four letters in length and written on a sign right next to the area to be painted.

It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite football commercials.

UPDATE: After a brief search for Lynzee Strauss, I found that this poor girl really did herself in with this article posted on the internet in 1996.  All sorts of nastiness ensued.  I'm guessing, based on the numerous things I read, that "College Isn't Necessary" was a poor attempt at satire. 

I'll have one of everything.

Have you ever been to a restaurant where everything on the menu looks so good that you just want to order one of everything?  Apparently, these folks feel the same way about punctuation:

"Yeah, I'll take a well-placed terminal comma, but I'd like to substitute a misplaced semicolon for the other comma, and I'll have a side of ellipses instead of a colon, please."

Except rather than ordering one of everything, it's like ordering spaghetti and meatballs with a tuna fish instead of one of the meatballs and peanut butter instead of garlic bread. It's a vomit-inducing plateful of poor punctuation choices.

Also Known As

I'm really a bit of a purist when it comes to quotation marks.  I prefer for them to be used only for direct quotations.  I realize that that hope is not based entirely in reality, however.

Because quotation marks are also often used to indicate that something is not authentic or an imperfect substitute or something other than what it is called, misuse of quotation marks, particularly by those who use them as a misguided way to draw attention to or put emphasis on a word or group of words, can be quite hilarious.

So they might be Black Angus steaks, but they darned sure are not certified.  The word certified, by the way, was in quotation marks everywhere it occurred in the menu.  If you're going to use them incorrectly, I suppose you might as well use them consistently incorrectly, eh?

And then there's this high note of quotation mark misusage hilarity:

Actually, it's far more sad than hilarious.

I'm not sure what the EXes are all about, and I'm not going to get into a discussion about the use of till instead of until.  That's a gripe for another day.  There's just so much wrong with almost everything in that sign, it's hard to me to see straight at this point.  My eyes are burning.  Look away!

If your retinas are not aflame from the atrocity above, you may want to check out The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.  Hilarious stuff over there.  Better, even, than the examples above.