Call The Grammar Police: Apostrophe Edition

Mangled English is expected on Facebook and Twitter where grammarians are scarce. But CNN? Really? Isn’t someone supposed to proofread this stuff before it hits air?

I have been known to bite my tongue while reading social media. “Your” and “you’re” are used interchangeably. The same goes for “there,” “their” and “they’re.”

Homonyms! The bane of written English. Words that sound alike, but have different meanings.

It drives me nuts.

Mangled English is expected on Facebook and Twitter where grammarians are scarce. But CNN? Really? Isn’t someone supposed to proofread this stuff before it hits air?

If you close your eyes and concentrate you can probably hear screaming from the control room.

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7 thoughts on “Call The Grammar Police: Apostrophe Edition”

  1. Oh, I don’t know… maybe they just forgot the quotation marks…
    Malaysia PM: “It’s Missing Plane” (i.e. “It is missing plane!”)
    Or am I being too literal?

  2. I’d cut them some slack on that one. I read it as an abbreviated form of “It is from the missing plane.” I’ve seen far worse.

  3. It gets worse—try reading the daily newspaper. Guess they don’t pre read and check articles anymore. And then there will be the article itself–ending mid sentence and leaving off the last lines or paragraph. My old English teachers must be rolling about in their graves.

    1. Barb –

      I worked alongside the men and women of the Courant. My copy editor friends were craftsmen, adept at their task. Unfortunately, copy editor positions have been cut to the bone. Much of the Courant’s editing was done elsewhere by people who didn’t know Connecticut and were much too busy to learn. It’s even worse at smaller papers that never had much in the way of resources.

  4. Geoff,

    You’re absolutely spot on…….and I hear they don’t teach cursive penmanship anymore…..Not only do people misuse homonyms, but “script” will soon be a lost art!

  5. I don’t think there would be any screaming; in fact, I don’t anyone would notice. Since you left CT, there are errors in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen every day, on every station that I scan through. It’s obvious no one proofs it, and no one ever changes it. I also have a peeve with Twitter; now that everyone has a smart phone with spell checker, there is no need for l33t-speak.
    Our language is deteriorating at an accelerating pace. Sad…

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