Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Apostrophe Catastrophe from CNN.com

Kris, who submitted this screenshot from CNN.com, said that the Toyota-related apostrophe catastrophe was on CNN's home page for almost an entire day last week.


Thanks, Kris!

7 comments:

Carlos said...

Couldn't that be a contraction of "Toyota has"?

Mark said...

If it pointed to this page, it was wrong to use the apostrophe: http://us.cnn.com/2010/US/02/13/toyota.recall.report/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Becky said...

"Toyota has behaved normally" doesn't really make sense.

Carlos said...

But…What if the link had pointed to an article suggesting Toyota (the company) had responded prudently (and normally) to vehicle malfunctions, just as other car companies had done in the past? If the article defended Toyota’s response, the headline could have read, “Report: Toyota has behaved normally”.

I was simply contending the use of the apostrophe in a contraction of Toyota has could have been correct. Without knowing where the link pointed, I couldn’t know it wasn’t a contraction.

Context is everything :-)

Mark said...

You're right, Carlos, but "has" in "Toyota has behaved normally" is about as redundant as "got" in, for example, "America has got talent".

Also, if it was "has", then "normally" is a strange choice for an adverb to apply to a business.

So for these reasons, I believe we have an apostrophe catastrophe here, and the link did point to the link from my previous post.

Carlos said...

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree, Mark. I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me :-)

PS
I did see the link in your comment, but your comment wasn't here when I was responding to the original post, which didn't have the link.

Mark said...

Hi Carlos,

Sorry, I don't disagree with you - you're correct too!

With the excess use of 'got' and 'has', nothing surprises me anymore.