PR Blogs

They’re everywhere – these criminals with a wanton disregard for the rest of us, undermining standards, setting a bad example and generally ruining a once proud nation. How can we hold our heads up high, even in the knowledge that we finished above Australia in the Olympic medals table, or that we are going to stage the greatest sporting event on earth in 2012, while this sort of thing carries on?
It’s got to stop. We must join together and take a stand. We have to stamp out apostrophe crime.
It used to be known as the greengrocers’ apostrophe. You would see Apple’s  or Cabbage’s when it should be Apples or Cabbages. Nowadays this glaring error is not confined to greengrocers, oh no. We have the garages’ apostrophe, the supermarkets’ apostrophe, the practically any trader’s or company’s apostrophe.
The rules for apostrophes are clear and simple. They are used to denote missing letters, such as I mustn’t instead of I must not, or it’s instead of it is; they are used to denote possession, such as the Chamber’s policy or the writer’s pen or the directors’ meeting,
They are never, ever – not even in your wildest dreams – used to denote plurals. So we don’t have “MOT’s carried out here”, or “100’s of CD’s in stock”, or “Free magazine’s at reception”.
It is time for the great British public to rise up and demand that apostrophe criminals change their ways. Perhaps we could give them ASBOs (Apostrophe Standard Breaching Orders) or maybe give them 1000 lines (I must not misuse apostrophes for example by writing I must not misuse apostrophe’s) for every offence.
OK – so this is a bit of a rant, but there is a serious point here. We are always hearing about businesses bemoaning the inability of school leavers to cope with basic Maths or English. But who are employers to say such things when so many of them – and there are big companies which are in the apostrophe criminal classes – get such a simple rule of English wrong?
Now I am not against the English language evolving; it always has and always will. But we cannot throw grammar and spelling out of the window or down the drain just because we cannot be bothered to avoid mistakes.
So let’s name and shame the apostrophe criminals. Send your examples of apostrophe crime us at pr dogs and let’s (missing letter) get our readers’ (plural possessive) backing for this agency’s (single possessive) campaign!