Grammar Police v Wedding Party *MNHQ tweaked title at OP's request*

Yanbu. I get so annoyed by erroneous apostrophes. Come on, how hard is it to understand that plural = no apostrophe needed. Possessive = use an apostrophe.

Especially astounding when something is in print (or a neon sign!)

Well shouldn't whoever is commissioning the piece just know? And what if one day the printer isn't checking/doesn't notice. Are they then liable for an incorrect print job?

Edit because I obviously made a typo on such a thread and my initial fix made it worse 🙃

Some years ago a friend was a receptionist in a tattoo shop. Customer was late for her appointment and was rude and unapologetic to both receptionist and tattoo artist. She wanted some script as a tattoo. Tattoo artist asked her to write down exactly what she wanted tattooed.

She wote it down. What she wanted was 'Don't let your dreams die'. She wrote 'Don't let you're dreams die'.

Receptionist asked her if she was sure this was exactly as she wanted it. Reply was yes, do you think I'm stupid? OK, she showed her to the artist's station. Artist asked if she was happy with what she'd written, she rolled her eyes and said that she was. Checked again before he started, still yes.

I often wonder how long it took for someone to point out the error.

Note - staff in this tattoo shop were lovely, and did occasionally have to tweak spelling for customers, but that customer was obnoxious so...

Yes, this isn’t anything especially new. What has changed is the much higher visibility of poor literacy. I have extended family in their sixties and seventies who literally can’t punctuate a sentence. Until relatively recently the only writing I saw from them was birthday and Christmas cards. Now I see their text messages, emails, and social media comments and I have an insight that I wouldn’t have had twenty years ago.

“NO REGERTS”

Still do- I was doing subordinating conjunctions and expanded noun phrases with eight year olds today.
Not really sure what they gained from it though.

I'm quite elderly now and used to often come across unbelievable grammatical errors, including misuse of apostrophes, as a child. Yes we were taught grammar, the quality of teaching varied from school to school, but some people are just not good at it. I still see it often, it is irritating but not a major irritation in the scheme of things.

In the case cited by the OP, someone else was involved in printing that and should have known better. Had I been the client I would have complained, preferred to have gone without.

When did this weird apostrophe/plural error start? It never used to be a thing. The English language is v easy in that most words add an s to form the plural. Did someone get confused with the possessive eg someone's and think when a word ends with an s it needs an apostrophe and it just spread?

Yes, they are.

It's bloody depressing.

There’s a Mitchell and Webb episode, still I think on YouTube, entitled ‘The Grammar Nazi’.
Very funny, and in that case, the ‘Nazi’ tag does seem appropriate!

Someone who only speaks English tried to correct me on a similar thing in French (I am bilingual). Note that this person doesn't actually speak French, but was attending a wedding in France and somehow convinced themselves (but not me!) that English grammar rules should apply in French. So, in French, the rule is that you write 'les' (plural 'the') and keep the name in the singular: Les Smith. This person was incandescent that it wasn't Les Smiths.

Your not wrong for being really annoyed at that!

I'm still recovering from the very recent revelation (after wondering and then googling while on holiday) that Australian place names (or at least the ones in NSW) don't contain possessive apostrophes - they legislated for it in the 1960s.

Can't believe I didn't notice when I lived in Australia for several years.

Apostrophes and place names - Apostrophes, Etc.

apparently there's something similar in the US
United States Board on Geographic Names - Wikipedia

Are people not taught this when 12 years or younger?

Unfortunately all this poor grammar has become normalised to many people

It really is! You can probably also blame the Etsy seller, I see so many personalised Christmas decorations being advertised with incorrect apostrophes. Especially during covid when it has little pictures of all the things related to covid, we bought one and it had an incorrect apostrophe. Requested a correct replacement and gave the wrong one to MIL 😆

So basically both buyer and seller get it wrong and don't know the difference

have not rtft: YABVVVU to use the word Nazi about anything other than the National Socialist Party.

It diminishes what they did. (am probably the 94th person to say that)

I followed a van the other day that had 'Cheer up, your driving a great car' in decals on the back. It was a decal company van so you think they'd have checked it!

There wrong. Your right.

Often, it goes the other way, and a startling number of signwriters and printers will already have appalling grammar knowledge.

It might not be that they don't have time/can't be bothered/don't want the grief of correcting a customer's spelling or grammar; but in fact, they may be presented with something that is correct and then go out of their way to 'correct' it, according to their own wrong assumptions!

Would be a bit rude to only refer to one person's wedding, though. 😅

All I can say is: IDIOTS!

And?

Are you new to the Internet?

Let's just hope it didn't go the other way, and they didn't have it tattooed just above/before their bumhole - which is not only already in the shape of a 'nothing', but from time to time........

But shouldn't they just know without checking?

I understand spelling - there might be some tricky ones that aren't well known.

But apostrophes? They're really not hard. I don't understand why people have such block with them

And yes, they are explicitly taught in the National Curriculum