A Zorro for our times
By adamg - Sun, 07/15/2007 - 6:26pm.
Kate calls herself the Grammar Vandal and goes around with a pad of sticky commas/apostrophes to put on local signs that need them. She reports how this recently got her into a spot of trouble with Tufts police, who didn't take kindly to her (or the tall guy who agreed to help her) adding an apostrophe to a sign reading "Professors Row:"
... Cop (yelling): "What are you doing?"
Me: "Just fixing the sign."
Cop: "What are you doing to it?!"
Me: "Officer, this is incorrect grammar. Oh, and I don't even know this guy! I pulled him off the street!" ...
Via J's Scratchpad.
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Grammar Police
Wow. I bet the story of Presidents Day (no apostrophe, before OR after the s) gives her fits.
I mean, really. I get as annoyed as anyone else over misuse of its and it's, but she's trying to tell us that "Teachers College" is wrong to call itself that. How arrogantly fundamentalist.
Not Grammar
This is a punctuation error, if it is an error at all.
It should be a collective possessive, marked by an apostrophe. That isn't a grammatical error.
Here's a good example of a very public gaff. We recently received a notice for an event that was sent out by the Mayor's Office. It read: YOUR INVITED! This is the second year running for that particular error, and came after numerous posters to a city-wide list called it out as sloppy at best.
Well, I guess that was the kind of schools people got when the school committee firmly believed that people should send their kids to private schools if they wanted them to have a reasonable education.
Comma Police
Comma Police
Arrest this sign
The punctuation
Is hardly benign
So we must fix that apostrophe!
Professors Row?
Who are they kidding? Drunken Debauchery Row is more like it. At least, that's how it was 20+ years ago when I was an undergrad there.
That said, there is no apostrophe in the name of the road, just like it's spelled on the sign. Way to "fix" a non-existent problem.
A lovely discovery
I discovered last week that this Grammar Vandal was the one who placed the comma sticker on the Reebok "RUN EASY BOSTON" sign outside South Station. I applaud her efforts and boo The Man who thwarts her quest not to make the world perfect, but to make it grammatically correct!
Now all we need is someone
Now all we need is someone to go around removing all those extra apostrophes. *grumble*
(Not logging in so I can try the math. HA)
I love the ironic use of quotation marks
Like the Hyde Park pizza place that used to advertise "free" delivery.
Statement of Fact: Professors Row
The quarrels are so vicious because the stakes are so small.