I’ve come across a couple of apostrophe misuses this week that i thought might amuse my readership.
The first is a screenshot from @robbyg (that’s how we refer to Rob on Twitter), which i like for two reasons: 1. It’s an ad for the Dell Adamo, and 2. It has a lovely misuse of “it’s.”
What they meant to say, of course, is, “in a class of its own.” It’s is a contraction of it is or it has, whereas its is the possessive form of it.
The second image is a photo i took this Tuesday of the menu at Granite City. The apostrophe is mysteriously missing:
The phrase “a chocolate lovers” makes no sense. The possessive form of “lover,” in this case – as with most nouns – requires an apostrophe. Lovers is just lover pluralized, whereas what they meant to write is, “a chocolate lover’s dream.”
Also, as a bonus, i’m pretty sure your self in the following sentence should just be yourself. Yes? Anyone?
The cake, by the way, was delicious. 
Words that are one word:
meantime
earful
Words that are two words:
every day
Unless, that is, you’re using the word “everyday,” which is an adjective used to describe a daily activity/thing.
Examples:
For Steph, dry skin is an everyday problem.
She has to put lotion on her hands every day.
I’ve been calling people i don’t know EVERY DAY for the past week and a half trying to get this thing and that thing all figured out and hooked up and re-checked and working properly. The weird-flushing toilet. The non-operational door keys. The new cell phone line. Oh my god, the new cell phone line. The wireless internet. Everything is finally working, i think. We just need our window shades and couches to be delivered now. And we need to hang things on the walls.
One EVERYDAY annoyance is the fact that there’s some clattery noise coming from the radiator or the windows or something, which drives me NUTS. I’m about to start wearing headphones constantly. Sleeping is especially difficult, no thanks to the light pouring in through the window above our front door from the brilliant beams out in the hallway. Whose awesome idea was THAT?
The stress will fade away soon, and i’ll start bragging about what an amazing place i live in now. I promise.
This isn’t common English misuse so much as Engrish, but it’s still fun. My friend Calee snapped this photo over in the Drake neighborhood. I’d gone by this place before, but never noticed all the wonderful mistakes in their signage.
We got our lovely loft!! We’ll be moving in March, so get your address books ready. I’ll have more personal business to blog about when all that happens, sorry about all the English stuff and everything. I’m planning to move all of that to a new blog eventually, but first i have to design and build it. So that could take a while.
This is priceless.
You’re is a contraction of YOU ARE. It’s that simple.
Found this little gem on the menu at Chef’s Kitchen on NYE. Great portobellos, bad English.
This is a perfect example of the unnecessary apostrophe in a pluralized noun. I especially like it because there are two other pluralized nouns that they didn’t add the unnecessary apostrophe to: PEPPERS and MUSHROOMS. Why, then, add an apostrophe to “extras?”
(Also, is it just me or does it seem like the question mark there ought to go outside the quotation marks? What’s the rule on that one..?)