To think this is grammatically incorrect....

[iamthegrinch]

A personalised key holder thing from a relative with "the smith's" in big letters at the top.

I'm certainly no expert when it comes to grammar, but this key holder is going to give me the fucking rage with the pointless apostrophe.

DH thinks no one will notice and he's not sure if it's wrong... thoughts please mn.

To clarify there isn't one of us and it's our surname.

Eleanor. I've been staring at this thing all day getting more and more frustrated!

Smiths's is just as wrong as Smith's if you're referring to the whole family.

I'd just throw it away, what an infuriating item!

It's wrong, as is putting a comma before but. Just saying......

A comma is used before 'but' when it's used to connect two independent clauses.

Eats Shoots and Leaves. lol.

It's wrong, as is putting a comma before but. Just saying

The comma before "but" in the OP's OP is perfectly fine, as it divides two independent clauses.

It's definitely wrong. Just throw it away, it's going to annoy you every time you look at it.

It's wrong.

Apostrophes have no function in forming the plural. The plural of Smith is Smiths. You add an s at the end, just as in cats and dogs.

If the apostrophe is to denote possession then the apostrophe should come after the final s.

Examples:
The Smiths' dog.
The Smiths' car.
The Smiths' house was broken into last night by thieves who used a set of personalised keys they found on the floor of the Post Office.

It’s not a comma. It’s an apostrophe.

Couldn’t The Smiths’ denote implied possession?😉

A comma is NEVER used before but, under any circumstances. The but itself does the dividing - nothing additional is needed.

Kate - am aware of that.

A comma is NEVER used before but, under any circumstances. The but itself does the dividing - nothing additional is needed

Not true:

www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-before-but/

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/learnit/learnitv258.shtml

Don't waster your time, echt. BLOCK CAPITALS were employed, which has the magical ability to render the untrue incontrovertibly true

I'm grand, thanks. I'll be fucking off nowhere.

You're very rude. But still wrong.

Grammarly is American.

The response on the BBC website is littered with grammatical errors and isn't a verified respondent, so that can be discounted too. Just because the trend to shove a comma in anywhere you feel like it has grown does not make it correct.

She came - you don't start a sentence with but either 😁 If you're going to try and lecture on grammar, at least make yourself sound credible.

You can start a sentence with "but":

blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/05/can-i-start-a-sentence-with-a-conjunction/

It's wrong but I pass on giving any further explanation.

Our surnames ends with es- no clue how to make that plural eses looks ridiculously wrong so usually just go for the es family if the need arises

I'm going to thrown one in just for a laugh..

How about -

The Smith Keys

using Smith as a collective pronoun for all the keys....?

Punctuation error not grammatical

I’m a writer, and to be doubly annoying, have a Masters in English. The apostrophe in ‘Smith’s’ is incorrect. ‘Smiths’ would be correct. ‘Smiths’s’ could be used interchangeably as it denotes the same sense of ownership (but is somewhat more fussy).

Is it just me who thinks that the word "Smith" is starting to look odd, having read it so much??

Exactly what I was about to post - it's such a common name I've never considered it odd, but it looks really strange now!

Couldn’t The Smiths’ denote implied possession?

Yes, but that's not what the key holder has written on it.

Haha Smith has begun to look wrong to me too regardless of apostrophes or commas or whatever. It just looks wierd 😂😂😂

My grammar is poor and I go out my way to read these threads as a way to try and educate myself but all that happens is that I get really confused. If I had to write something about some keys that belonged to the Smith family I would just rearrange the sentence to avoid making a mistake.
🤓
(Did you see what I did 😅)

What mathanxiety said.

Smiths’s/could be used interchangeably as it denotes the same sense of ownership

But not after a plural, only after a possessive singular e,.g. James's. Jane Smith's keys or Jane Smiths's keys, but the several Smiths' keys.