Apostrophes in search of a greengrocer
April 22nd, 2006
Outside a shop in Woolhampton, Berkshire, just along the road from a highly recommended brasserie, well placed for travellers along the A4.
But why no apostrophe for cake’s?
[Photograph by kind permission of my mobile phone.]
Brian
From Ed Davies
April 23rd, 2006 at 8:06 amThis is a job for the Apostrophe Protection Society. They’ve got a page for photographs like this.
Brian writes: Thanks, Ed: I didn’t know about this splendid society. Unfortunately it’s no longer possible to send them photographs for their examples pages, but I have put a message on their message board with a link to this post with its picture.
Incidentally, one of the examples on the Society’s website of an alleged mistake shows a notice with sections headed, respectively, don’ts and do’s. I would defend do’s as a plural of do on the grounds that dos is unclear at first sight, suggesting an old-fashioned operating system rather than a plural form of ‘do’. Burchfield’s Fowler notes that "From the 17C. onwards an apostrophe was often used in the plural number when the noun ended in a vowel, e.g. grotto’s, opera’s, toga’s. Since the mid-19C., grammarians have condemned this use, but it continues to appear, to the amusement of educated people…". In a very few cases, including do’s, where the absence of an apostrophe makes it difficult immediately to recognise the word as a plural, I would be inclined to swallow an apostrophe for the sake of clarity.
From Tony Hatfield
April 23rd, 2006 at 10:59 amBrian- Mind your ps and qs!
Brian writes: This particular dilemma turns out to have spawned a huge volume of discussion on the web. Such as:
On balance I think I prefer ps and qs to p’s and q’s. And there’s clearly nothing at all wrong with CDs, MPs, the 1900s, and so forth. On the other hand, it would be hard to avoid the apostrophes in these examples:
Thanks to Paul Doherty for linking to that, too.
These linguistic teasers always seem to attract far more comments than almost any politics!
From Baralbion
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:16 amYou can sometimes get round the difficulty with capitals, as in "CDs". Ps and Qs perhaps? Or again, DOs and DON’Ts. No need, either, to write "1990’s" when you can write "1990s".
From Brian
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:30 amFrom Jane
Why are greengrocers always blamed for superfluous apostrophes? My father was a greengrocer and I’m pretty sure that his stall in Brixton Market would never have displayed such signs!
From Tim Weakley
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:06 pmI notice the sign said PASTY’S and not PASTIES or even PASTIE’S. Unfortunately, we can’t deconstruct the sign as referring to pasties and sandwiches manufactured by a Mr. Pie, or to Pie’s pasties and Sandwich’s (hot cross?) cakes.
From Baralbion
April 23rd, 2006 at 1:49 pmA postscript, if I may be indulged.
The Apostrophe Protection Society is not entirely aptly named. What the world needs are fewer, and better placed, apostrophes. For, strangely, people seem more often to commit the sin of commission than the sin of omission when it comes to apostrophes.
My own limited and unscientific observations suggest there is a tendency to insert an otiose apostrophe when a word ends in a vowel. In practice, the insertion (or omission) does not often obscure meaning. It’s just that inconsistency is a distraction.
From Tim Weakley
April 23rd, 2006 at 3:59 pmErnest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words (1954 edition):
‘Whether an apostrophe should be used to denote the plural of a word or symbol that does not ordinarily make a plural depends on whether the plural is readily recognisable as such. Unless the reader really needs help it should not be thrust upon him. It is clearly justified with single letters: "there are two o’s in woolly"; "mind your p’s and q’s". Otherwise it is rarely called for. It should not be used with contractions (e.g. M.P.s) or merely because what is put into the plural is not a noun.’
A reminder of the form of abbreviations of 50 years ago, which I remember being taught: M.P.s, not MPs.
From Peter Harvey
April 23rd, 2006 at 6:31 pmI imagine that the answer to your question is that cake ends in a consonant sound, while pie and pasty end with vowels. The famous greeengrocer’s apostrophe makes its appearance in forms such as potato’s.
From bazza
April 24th, 2006 at 10:27 amA taxi firm in this corner of Nottingham decorates its fleet of cars with, in very large lettering, "Quicks cab’s". This is a case of the correct punctuation marks, not necessarily in the right places.
From Tony Hatfield
April 24th, 2006 at 4:20 pmIs English the only language that inflicts this wretched dot on it’s writers? AFAIR neither French nor Italian use the possessive apostrophe, though both use one to indicate a missing vowel.
From Peter Harvey
April 24th, 2006 at 5:32 pmTony, Catalan is like Fench and Italian in that regard
– and those languages have written accents that show pronunciation
differences and distinguish homographs and they have to be learnt, though not always perfectly. Spanish also has accents for homographs. German is not quite the same as English but does manage to say Peters Haus (Peter’s house) without the sky falling in.
From Baralbion
April 25th, 2006 at 8:38 amI had been trying to remember a quotation pertinent to a discussion elsewhere on the site on the artistic validity of different styles of music. I found it on a Shakespeare concordance site and here it is:
Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?
We should need a scholar to tell us whether Shakespeare might actually have produced this inconsistent punctuation or whether it is the work of editors (or indeed a mistake on the part of the website creator). But it suggests that our preoccupation with such matters might be a relatively recent phenomenon. The title of the play itself certainly gives some encouragement to that view: “Much Ado About Nothing”.
From Tony Hatfield
April 25th, 2006 at 9:16 amMe: "Is English the only language that inflicts this wretched dot on it’s writers"
I can’t believe I’ve written this.
Brian comments: I thought it was a deliberate joke!
From Baralbion
April 25th, 2006 at 12:12 pmIts alright. I thought you were being deliberately ironic.
From Peter Harvey
April 25th, 2006 at 12:17 pmBaralbion,
So did I. And as presumably are you.
From Ronnie
April 25th, 2006 at 12:28 pmI wander a little. Somebody quoted "I cc’d him a copy". (There may be some pleonasm there.) I have tended when copying letters to use c. for a single copy (to one person) and cc. for (plural) copies. Can I have a ruling please?
Brian writes: I don’t recall having seen c. tout court. Certainly e-mail clients all seem to use cc. for visible copies, even if to only one recipient, and bcc. for blind copies (also to one or more recipients). But I wouldn’t venture a ‘ruling’!
From Tony Hatfield
April 25th, 2006 at 12:41 pmIn which case honesty just ain’t the best policy!!!!
From Peter Harvey
April 25th, 2006 at 3:18 pmcc is not copies (plural); it is the initials of carbon copy/ies.bcc is the initials of blind carbon copy/ies. So the ghost of carbon paper lives on!
From Ronnie
April 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pmI do know the "carbon copy" theory, Peter, and don’t dismiss it out of hand. In defence of my view of the form I recall that c. and cc. have, or have had, another existence as caput and capita - chapter(s) - in footnotes. I have also a feeling that cc-ing did not establish itself until after the days of carbon paper, when the introduction of the photocopier allowed (far too) many copies of a document to be flung widely and imperiously round the office.
From Lavengro in Spain
May 14th, 2006 at 5:56 pmApostrophes revisited
Brian Barder has had several interesting discussions about language recently in his Ephems: click (here) and (here), and also (here) for one about apostrophes that I would like to discuss further. I have already written about apostrophes , particularly…
From Peter Harvey
May 14th, 2006 at 6:07 pmThe Concise Oxford Dictionary shows (blind) carbon copy as the only meaning of (b)cc (apart from cubic centimetre):
carbon copy (an indication that a duplicate has been or should be sent to another person).
The OED concurs:
carbon copy or copies (followed by a list of others to whom correspondence is to be copied)
and has a relevant quotation from 1936:
1936 L. I. Hutchinson Stand. Handbk. Secretaries 287 The carbon copy notation, ‘*c.c.’, should be the last notation. 1969 M. Pugh Last Place Left iv. 22 Have you seen the letter?+ It says c.c. to you. Carbon copy. 1982 Computerworld 23 Aug. 33/3 You may sometimes want to keep others informed of what you are asking a person or group to do. In that case, indicate it as a ‘carbon copy’ (CC) on the bottom of the memo.
From A Plague of Opinion! » The Canine Apostrophe
September 17th, 2006 at 8:21 am[…] Internet worthies such as Brian Barder and Tony Hatfield have provided us with examples of the inaccurate and excessive usage of apostrophes and I’m sure the Pedant General in Ordinary believes that the decline of Western Civilisation is, in no small part, due to the grammatical disasters that abound. Unfortunately I’m not going to improve the PG’s mood. It is, therefore, with some trepidation that I join the ranks of the pedants. […]
[Brian has replied on the relevant blog]