A Good Laugh or a Crying Shame?

[Bax-of-Delights]

Stone the crow's!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...nges-logo.html

And yes, reverting to Baskerville.
If you ask me they're barking mad.

[Serial_Apologist]

Waterstones makes me think of kidney stones for some reason - which wasn't the case before...

[Anna]

I have no wish to defend the demise of the apostrophe, but, I think because Waterstone's is not owned by Mr. Waterstone any longer, and therefore the bookshops are not his possession, the dropping of the apostrophe is valid in this case. But I wouldn't like it to become universal. As for the muddling of their and there and lose and loose and led and lead and to and too, I sometimes despair, or even dispare!

[vinteuil]

It has been Boots the Chemists and Lloyds Bank, sans apostrophes, since time immemorial - I don't think John or Jesse Boot - or Sampson Lloyd are turning in their graves...

Tho' of course the (unrelated) insurance bizniss is Lloyd's of London - avec apostrophe...

[PatrickOD]

Whether or not Waterstone(')s have got it right, consider the O in Irish names. Is it avec, or sans? I sign myself PatrickOD. I'm definitely a sans.

[umslopogaas]

I've got a little quote. Its from 'Mind the Stop' by G. V. Carey, a small Pelican paperback from 1971, first published in 1939 and then brought out in a revised edition in 1958.


"I have now dealt with all the stops except the APOSTROPHE, which I mention only that it may not feel neglected. It seems hardly necessary to state that it precedes the 's' of the possessive case in singular words (and plurals that do not end in 's') and follows it in plurals that end in 's' ('at his mother's knee', 'The Women's Institute', 'The Mothers' Union'); that to denote the possessive of singular words that already end in 's' it may either stand alone after that 's' or precede an extra one (St Thomas' or St Thomas's); and that with the possessive pronouns 'hers', 'yours, 'theirs', and 'its' it drops out altogether. Having said that much - and I had almost forgotten to mention that it is also used to indicate the omission of a letter ('don't' for 'do not' etc.) - I feel that I have done my duty by the apostrophe. Would that all stops gave so little trouble!

The remaining sections of this chapter, though not concerned with actual stops, seem to me to fit in better here than anywhere else."


Phew, talk about a punctuation marathon. And that's an easy one, you should see him in action on semi-colons.