Thanksgiving Catastrophe

Readers, I hope you all had a wonderful, properly punctuated Thanksgiving. I am thankful for all of you! I am especially thankful for J.A. who found a Turkey Day-themed apostrophe catastrophe.


Based on the apostrophe placement in seating's, it appears that the restaurant will make you sit in your seat for five hours. Oh, and that hyphen should be an en-dash.

Thanks, J.A!

More Apostrophe Horrors

Upon receiving this e-mail from GoAudioLearning, Kirsten decided that bad punctuation is a whole lot scarier than numbers.


Where did they misplace that apostrophe and em-dash? Oh, and there should probably be a question mark after "numbers."

Thanks, Kirsten!

Maybe the Writer Was Distracted By Faith Hill's Hot Bod

Seeing Faith Hill in a bikini was apparently so shocking to this writer that he/she forgot to include any punctuation (or a space) in the third line of this blurb:


An em-dash would have been appropriate before "it's." Get it together, MSN.

We Couldn't Have Said It Worse

Domicile Furniture, which is a pretty funny name in and of itself, ran a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune that featured "two wonderfully different types of errors," Winona writes. In the first photo, they add apostrophes to words that are already possessive.



Oh, and if we want to be really picky, that hyphen should be an en-dash. They also don't seem to understand the phrase couldn't have.


And, finally, cutting edge should have a hyphen. Thanks, Winona!

Everett, it's a comma, people!

Certain punctuation errors are very common. People often put an apostrophe before an "s" to make a plural, and unnecessary quotation marks are everywhere. But, every once in a while, I see punctuation mistakes that are truly bizarre. BostonCoach vans, which circle around South Station all day, have an apostrophe where a comma should be. See the bottom right of this photo:



There must be something in the water in Everett because alert reader Cindy recently sent me a photo of a beauty salon on Route 99 that uses a dash where a comma should be.

Picking on Macy's Again

Seeing a horrendous t-shirt at Macy's inspired me to start this blog. Sadly, the errant apostrophe on the Peanuts t-shirt is not the only punctuation error you'll find if you visit a Macy's store. My friend Merry sent me a picture of this sign that she saw there this weekend:



Those apostrophes are both wrong and inconsistent. And are those em-dashes where en-dashes should be?

Macy's in Downtown Crossing also features unnecessary quotation marks on its window displays.





Unless they're quoting someone who said, "The things we love about spring ... the trench," this is wrong.