A couple of weeks ago, my wife saw this graphic from Grammarly going around Facebook and shared it with me. (Even though she knew that I didn’t need a reminder.)
Apostrophes don’t make nouns plural
I was reminded of that image when I started into my backlog of online pluralization apostrophe errors this morning. I’m going to put them all into a single post as a giant reminder of that rule.
First off, this article on a new Android release from ChristianPost.com writer Vincent Funaro:
on the screen of device’s running the software
Next, HitFix’s list of 10 superheroes who really don’t need their own movie (click on #6 Superboy):
First thing’s first
Third, from an OC Register video story by Mark Eades (who probably didn’t write this headline, which should have read “The real-bearded Santa Clauses come”):
The real-bearded Santa Claus’ come
Finally, our first entry from Wired’s Autopia blog, an article by Damon Lavrinc about how much cars’ navigation systems suck:
So what are automaker’s to do
Sources: ChristianPost.com
HitFix.com
OCRegister.com
Wired.com
The Superboy one isn’t wrong. “First thing IS first.” It’s a contraction!
I’ve never heard of “First thing is first” as an idiomatic phrase. I have heard of “first things first.” http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/First+things+first
First thing’s first; I guess it all depends on whether the thing in question was singular or plural to start with. If it was singular, then First Thing’s First would still be ok (contraction of thing and is). If the thing was actually multiple things then this would, indeed, be bad.