AIBU to tell an Etsy seller their grammar/ punctuation is incorrect?

[Lolabear38]

Looking at signs on Etsy earlier and one I noticed said ‘Dog’s welcome’. Obviously dogs doesn’t need an apostrophe here - looking at other items in their shop I also noticed things like ‘mum’s are magic’ and some others. I messaged the seller about something I wanted to buy but mentioned the incorrect use of the apostrophe - in a polite, what I considered to be constructive way - and got a very arsey reply!

Apparently they have ‘hundreds of very satisfied customers’ (and actually they have had hundreds of sales according to their Etsy stats) and nobody has ever complained before, therefore it must be me who has the problem and I should probably look at other shops if I’m going to be ‘a perfectionist about it’.

AIBU to have pointed this out? I genuinely don't spend my days seeking out grammatical errors to correct but why are people blasted for trying to help like this? I'm not claiming my own grammar or language is perfect, but neither am I selling signs with mistakes on them. It seems like anytime someone does point out mistakes they're labelled 'grammar police' and demonised.

YABU - you should have let them carry on using apostrophes incorrectly and looked at another shop instead.

YANBU - you were trying to help 🤷🏻‍♀️

“mum’s are magic“??!

Vom.

Who is buying such tacky crap?

I always tell my kids dessert has to have ‘s’ twice because it’s Something Sweet

Whenever you're stressed, get some desserts

“mum’s are magic“??!
Vom.
Who is buying such tacky crap?

'Twas ever thus. We had St Winifred's School Choir singing There's No-one Quite Like Grandma back in my day. Massive hit record - I wonder how many of them were given as gifts and received through gritted teeth and with plastic smiles?!

But the OP says she was contacting the seller about a potential purchase. And what the seller was selling is actually signs, so in that sense, surely, she is a ‘professional sign writer’. It’s not as though you just strolled into Frank’s Fabric’s with no intention of buying cloth and took him to task about a sign someone else (presumably) made.

😂 that’s a good one, I must save it. Although a bit too true for me at the moment!

So many people can't stand being wrong nowadays. If my business was sign writing and I had made a basic grammatical error I'd want to know. My dd1 years ago posted a rant on Facebook and she used the wrong form of 'their'. I tried ignoring it but in the end I WhatsApped her. Basically she didn't appreciate me letting her know albeit privately. I unfollowed her after that just in case I saw anything similar. She doesn't know that as we're still Facebook friends.

I must admit, stuff like that really annoys me. Yes I get annoyed by people somewhat lacking in the brains department. I get that people make spelling mistakes when it comes to online posts or texts (for example) but surely if you're planning on making people pay for a product you're selling you'd make sure there was no spelling/grammar mistakes. Then again, the idiots that buy the product must be just as thick.

People don't like being told full stop.
You don't want to buy anything so that's the end of that move on.

Dosent mean they are lacking in the brains department.

They might be good at something your not.
Not everyone can be good at everything.
Rude to say thick.

I saw an Etsy seller selling antique jewellery by a named Swedish designer. Except it wasn't a designer, the 'name' was the Swedish words for 'Maker Unknown'. I hesitated about telling her, but she thanked me and changed it.

Haven't read the full thread. I had this once on Facebook. Someone had posted a picture of a family tree that a local artist had painted on their living room wall. All lovely except it said something like 'home is where ARE family is'. Loads of people commenting how lovely it was but I had to say something. My comment said it was nice but I had to point out the grammar mistake of are instead of our. Loads of people jumped on me saying I was wrong 🤣 and the artist pretty much told me to fuck myself

No, her name is Gilly. The business is Gilly's Lilly's

Stationery

Clearly not worth the aggro if you weren’t buying. I see so many errors these days and I’m a teacher!! The problem is that schools are so bogged down teaching about fronted adverbials and subordinate clauses that we don’t have time to teach the basics

She could be the best florist in the world and I would struggle to cross the threshold.

Silly Gilly.

I’d like to politely inform some of the posters here who are very keen to point out observed errors that a misplaced apostrophe is nothing to do with grammar and should not be referred to as a grammatical error.

Spelling, punctuation and grammar are three entirely different things. Any Wikipedia entry / book / person saying otherwise is wrong.

With that off my chest, I agree that YANBU. You were informing them out of kindness in case the error was costly to their business. There was no supercilious smugness. Quite different to people who take correct others without invitation simply because they think the person needs properly educating. That’s just plain rude, particularly in public.

I’ve been a teacher of English for approx 20 years. I never correct other adults unless I’ve been asked to (and I spot a lot of errors) but I would if I saw a small business was producing goods with an error on them.

Hopefully, I made no errors of my own in this reply. I’m sure someone will be along to correct me if I did.

Made me think of two school-related things that similarly irritated me.

1. Around 2010, a local school put up a banner announcing proudly that they were celebrating the centenary of their lovely Victorian building. No, they weren't. Queen Victoria died in 1901.
2. A school called The Hawthorne's. I see it's now changed its name, very wisely. It was near a Hawthorne Road. What the 's was doing in the name was anybody's guess.

@Lolabear38 i would’ve done the same!

Well not really as it could be Lily's flower shop. However, I now see its Gilly's shop.

No, her name is Gilly. The business is Gilly's Lilly's

Maybe her partner is called Lilly ('unique' spelling) and she feels so inextricably linked to her that she's named her shop after that feeling: Gilly is Lilly's (beloved).

That's got to be the most likely explanation....

Issues like this are often disability released. Posts like these always highlight the significant lack of emotional intelligence that exists within the mumsnet community.

If I had some form of learning difficulty that meant I struggled with spelling and grammar, I either wouldn't take up sign writing as a career, or I'd find some way to check that my signs were accurate.

‘Dog’s welcome’.

You could read that as 'dog is welcome' and maybe it is. I don't know what happens if you turn up with dogs plural though. As for stationary cupboards, technically it's accurate, unless it's a roving cupboard, but they're quite rare. And some stationary cupboards also contain stationery, which is nice.

<shrug> People don't like being told they're wrong, so I'm not at all surprised she reacted like that, to be honest. I wouldn't have bothered if I were you.

I think the type of people who would buy that tat wouldn’t know much about grammar

I corrected someone once who used "are" for "our" (she was going to have it engraved) and she reported me to MNHQ who chastised me for attacking her for her accent. Not my problem.
She is as thick as shit.