The perks of apostrophes
May 10, 2014 at 12:43 pm | Posted in language | 10 CommentsTags: apostrophes, innovation, language, language change, plurals, punctuation, rules
This ad has been doing the rounds this morning, to the sound of garments being rent all over twitter.
I got a bit excited, though. As a linguist, I was trained to assume that language behaviour is motivated. By this, I mean linguists assume people who know and use a language have (largely unconscious) reasons for speaking or writing in particular ways. I’m not saying no-one ever makes a mistake in writing or speaking; I’m just suggesting that we shouldn’t immediately write off everything that looks ‘wrong’ as an error, but instead think about why someone might have made that language choice, even if they weren’t aware of it at the time.
Writing is particularly interesting, because it’s easy to spot ‘mistakes’ and chastise people for ‘incorrectness’. The Rules are written down in dictionaries, style guides and grammar books. But writing isn’t simply about adhering to a set of (often arbitrary*) grammatical rules. While people delight in sharing this kind of thing…
… there are examples where the ‘correct’ written language can seem ambiguous or unclear. This is what I think is going on in the Dorothy Perkins ad. (More on this in a minute.)
So, you know the rule about plural formation, right? No apostrophes in plurals. Simple. Except even style guides give some exceptions, including plurals of some foreign words (folio’s), numbers (100’s) and letters (mind your p’s and q’s, the three R’s). Why the exceptions? I’d suggest it’s for clarity. The plural of folio is probably to suggest the correct pronunciation (foh-lee-ohz, not foh-lee-oss), while the others are probably to make sure readers interpret what’s written correctly (p’s versus P.S., 100’s versus 100 seconds…?).
Clarity. I saw a sign advertising coffees and tea’s. Why the apostrophe in tea’s only? Possibly because the writer unconsciously worried that teas might be misread (or misunderstood) as tease. (Yes, yes, I know this sounds nuts. I know the plural of pea is peas. Bear with me.)
I think there are several possible motivations for what’s going on in the DP ad.
- Making sure people read words correctly. If the plural of maxi is written as maxis, how do you stop people from reading it as ‘max-iss’ (and failing to understand it)? The writer is trying to be clear.
- Distinguishing one sense (meaning) of a word from another. Yes, the plural of pencil is pencils, not pencil’s. But DP doesn’t sell pencils you write with; it sells pencil skirts. Minis – they’re cars, aren’t they? The writer forms the plural with an apostrophe to make sure that the reader understands that the word is being used in a different sense, and that DP hasn’t suddenly branched out into selling automobiles and stationery. Again, it’s about clarity. (Note that dresses and savings are pluralised without apostrophes, as these words are used in their primary (normal) sense.)
- Maxi’s, mini’s, pencil’s and skater’s are actually abbreviations of noun phrases: maxi dresses, mini dresses… So the apostrophe indicates something missing (which is, incidentally, a well-established use of apostrophes that is drummed into EVERYONE at school. Why not extend this to mean more than just a letter or two being omitted?).
In fact, it’s possible to see this as linguistic innovation, rather than fall-of-the-Empire type lassitude. In my first year at university, we were told to keep an eye out for this kind of stuff, as it might indicate ‘a linguistic change in progress’. So, in a couple of hundred years, when apostrophes are routinely used to distinguish one meaning of a word from another and style guides have whole sections on when to use pencils and when to use pencil’s, you’ll put aside your harp, look down from the clouds, remember this blogpost and smile.
P.S. Yes, yes. I know hundred’s shouldn’t have an apostrophe. I can’t explain that one. Sorry.
P.P.S. I’m not saying these choices are made on purpose – just that they are made for a reason, even if the writer her-/himself isn’t aware of that reason.
P.P.P.S. I should say that I am in no way arguing that this use of apostrophes is beautiful, stylish, or shouldn’t make you want to shave your head, climb a lamppost and start picking people off with a crossbow. I’m just saying it’s interesting.
* For a lovely, cogent, witty explanation of the arbitrariness of grammatical ‘rules’, see The Stroppy Editor.
10 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a Reply
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
Thanks for the namecheck!
I think 1 is a pretty common reason for adding an apostrophe. And 3 is an ingenious bit of rationalisation, although I suspect in this case there wasn’t that much thought that went into it!
TBH what intrigues me most about the ad is “shop the offer” – I’ve never noticed “shop” used transitively like that before.
Comment by Tom Freeman— May 10, 2014 #
You’re welcome! Yeah 3 is a bit, er, creative on my part, though I do wonder about how we deal with nouns that ‘represent’ NPs.
‘Shop’ as a transitive verb is pretty common (evidently you don’t spend as much time on US fashion sites as me 😉 ) – ‘shop the look’ being the example I’ve come across most frequently. Never fails to make me twitch…
Comment by accidentobizaro— May 10, 2014 #
Here’s an example of 3. the apostrophe indicates something missing
emails
Ta-da! The only way to make sense of it is to assume it is an abbreviation of ’email messageS’ (although we also skip the apostrophe – what’s wrong with us?)
The plural of mail is mail. The plural of email is email.
Or not.
“Did the post come?”
“Yes. You got 4 mails. One letter and 3 bills.”
“I rarely get much mail these days, but I get hundreds of emails.”
When it started I tried to get the BBC to stop saying and writing ’emails’ but they ignored me. Thus, emails is now official. I had to rely on rationalisation 3. to get over it. I had learned to say, ‘messages’ instead of email. It seems a lot of people couldn’t make that leap.
“Does your phone ring very often these days?”
“I get a few phones, but mostly from telemarketers.”
Comment by http://bradbelltv— May 13, 2014 #
Ha! That’s a nice example. ‘Email’ is an interesting one because it ‘should’ (those are knowing quote marks, of course) be non-count – so the plural of email should be ‘pieces of email’, or some such. Steven Pinker is quite good on all this, as I recall, arguing that nouns used in new senses behave differently. So the plural of watchman is watchmen, but the plural of walkman is walkmans.
I like very much that you tried to persuade the BBC to change their practice, incidentally, Kudos for that.
Comment by accidentobizaro— May 13, 2014 #
what also could be the motivation behind the ad is that Dorothy Perkin’s’s’s highly educated copywriter is trying to get ‘down with the kids’ and assumes its customers are comprehensive school fodder who were never taught their own language but although cleverenough to try and write an ad like a posh lovie pretending to be working class in a Mike Leigh film is not clever enough to realise how patronising it could come across as
Comment by northernbike— May 13, 2014 #
There’s some truth to this, I’m sure. There’s a whole lot of ‘language of advertising’ stuff I nearly brought in but didn’t because space, droning on, etc. P.S. kudos for all the apostrophes in ‘Perkin’s’s’s’. I wanted to do that but I’dn’t’ve got away with it 😉
Comment by accidentobizaro— May 13, 2014 #
PS there was one of those portable electronic signs at the weekend in cumbria which said ‘look out for cyclist’s’ and I am sure the illiterates like me thought ‘crikey, better slow down a bit then’ whilst the people with GCSEs drove on thinking ‘look out for cyclist’s what darling?’
Comment by northernbike— May 13, 2014 #
Ha ha!
Comment by accidentobizaro— May 13, 2014 #
Am I the only person who cares that there should be a comma between “like” and “Dorothy”?
Comment by American Soustannie— June 11, 2014 #
No, that bugs me to distraction, too. Muphry’s law strikes again… 😉 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
Comment by accidentobizaro— June 11, 2014 #