A Word on the Words

I’VE complained about the misuse of apostrophes before, but forgive me for returning to the subject. An example has come to my attention that is so bad I cannot stay quiet.

I was sent a picture of a sign pointing to a LADIE’S TOILET. Painful, isn’t it? To make matters worse this sign was in a branch of a UK-wide chain of stores. Though sorely tempted, I won’t name the guilty.

What amazes me is that this sign must have been seen by quite a few people before being hung up.

Someone must have decided a sign was needed and wrote it out.

As all things have a cost, a management wallah of some magnitude must have approved this idea.

It will then have been printed by someone else and put in place by yet another person.

The shop staff must have looked at their new sign and decided, yes, it is the very thing to point females towards a place of ablutions.

Did no one spot it is horribly, ridiculously, laughably illiterate?

I find the abuse of apostrophes baffling, given that punctuation is more usually left out than added in.

Commas, quotation marks, even full stops are omitted willy-nilly.

But it would appear that as soon as some people see an S they feel compelled to give it an apostrophe.

I think they are idiot’s.