Friday, March 5, 2010

Love Notes and Apostrophes Revisited

Lewis,
Lives are made
of stories. I have
so many great
stories in my life
that include you!
I hold them
precious always.

Happy Birthday!!
All my love,

Laura

I was browsing the library bookstore today and found a copy of "Chicken Soup for the Soul". I have read alot of the Chicken Soup books, but never the original. It was $1. I picked it up and opened the cover and found this sweet little note to someone named Lewis from someone named Laura. It makes you wonder... what happened to Lewis and Laura that this book ended up in the library bookstore? (Well, anyway, it makes ME wonder). What is the STORY of Lewis and Laura? Did Lewis die in a freak accident at the nuclear power plant and all of his books were donated to the library? Did Lewis find someone new and go on to make new stories, leaving Laura with only a sad story to tell? Did Laura find someone new and go on to make new stories, leaving Lewis to donate everything she had ever given him to the library? Are Lewis and Laura happily married with two children and a dog and just needed to clean out the spare room for the new baby they just found out they are unexpectedly expecting?

I don't know. I may never know. :-)

On a completely unrelated topic, however, I was at the main library today and saw a sign someone made on the computer that said, "NON-FICTION VIDEO'S". I don't blog every time I see a mistake of this nature, (because if I did, it would be like every day) but this one seemed particularly agregious considering it was at the LIBRARY. So as a refresher, people, a plural word such as VIDEOS does not require an apostrophe.

A while later I was at a branch of the library and saw this....
"DVD S". In the case of initials, it is okay (and sometimes advisable) to put an apostrophe just for clarification. Not necessary, but okay. An example would be something like, "Kristy got all A's in her classes this semester". There is no grammatical reason for the apostrophe, but it just sort-of looks better that way and is officially okay to use. But in the case of "DVD S", I think the person who made these signs was just unsure of what to do, so they just left a space between DVD and "S". It shows me they were thinking, which is a positive thing. But they messed up, too. In this case, they should have either gone with "DVD'S" or "DVDs".

You can thank me for the lesson in apostrophe usage!

Hugs,

2 comments:

Kristy said...

Ever the funny girl! You know I was thinking of all my trouble in English with the apostrophes,(or is that apostrophe's?) - and laughed when you included me in your little analogy! I think taking Biology this semester has ended my A streak... Sad, I know.

And yes, I would surely wonder myself what happened to Lewis and Laura - and how that book happened to be discarded....

Kristy said...
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