Steph has forwarded a photograph of a mobile coffee stall, belonging of the Apostrophe chain. Their coffee shops are springing up all over central London. Their slogan is
“Apostrophe – the accent on taste”
The faulty grammar is painful enough- but the name of the company just compounds the error even more! Steph knew how much we would appreciate the picture. Thanks, daughter, you’re a star!
[btw, are there any other words in common usage ending ‘ophe’?]
Oh my goodness! How on earth could that get out into the wild? They must be a complete bunch of illiterates! Send it to Private Eye at once - you might earn yourself £10!
ReplyDeletePomona x
Thanks for that suggestion P - waiting to hear from Ian Hislop now!
Deletecatastr'ophe?
ReplyDeleteJane x
Oh that's cringe-worthy. Do you think if someone pointed it out to them they would say it was deliberate?
ReplyDelete"A strophe forms the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode." As any fule kno...
ReplyDeleteSo is that pronounced Strophee and Anti-strophee then? And I DID say 'common usage' - and would point out that in 34 years, I do not recall you EVER saying antistrophe to me!! [and please, no puns about the cup won by my mother's sister]
DeleteSainsbury have an aisle labelled cd's and dvd's and a local shoe shop has 1000's of reductions.
ReplyDeleteI notice that the shop still calls itself Sainsbury's, and McDonald's also retains the possessive apostrophe. But Morrisons and Waterstones have dropped theirs.
DeleteOh no, that's appalling! A friend of mine has a shop and some printed leaflets she has on the counter have a rogue apostrophe. I have to resist the urge to point it out every time I'm there. The worst was a newsletter from school saying that the children "had been learning about apostrophe's". I nearly cried.
ReplyDelete***Faith Hope and Charity Shopping first blogiversary giveaway open now***
I would have been tempted to send the newsletter back to the Head with the offending apostrophe ringed in red! That is inexcusable.
DeleteFrustrating, but I like that you bring punctuations to our attention. It's good for us.
ReplyDeleteOuch! That kind of thing sets my teeth on edge.
ReplyDeleteHow about strophe and antistrophe? (Common usage, perhaps, among English majors and logophiles.)
What a catastrophe! My inner proofreader escaped, winced and groaned. Aaaaaaagh!
ReplyDeleteWhat a catastrophe! It never ceases to amaze me how poor most people's grammar is (hopes he has that apostrophe in the right place. Thinks one people, therefore apostrophe 's'. Leaves happy).
ReplyDeleteArgh! Eeek! Can it be post-Modernist ironic? Is it possible that anyone could be that careless? Perhaps they are generating free publicity?
ReplyDeleteBut not good publicity...
I also came up with catastrophe and strophe. I think they are used more commonly in French (where we don't pronounce the final 'e', BTW).
Arghhhhhh! You might just appreciate this cartoon that a friend share with me on Facebook: http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/badgrammar.jpg
ReplyDelete