I previously pointed out a badly-placed apostrophe in EA’s The Simpsons: Tapped Out game. Now they’ve updated the whole game with a temporary wintertime theme, and with the update came a new bad non-apostrophe.
Lets use them…
Lisa would never write a sentence like that and leave out the apostrophe in “let’s.”
On Thingiverse’s Help with Barcodes page, they call for a blurring of lines between digital stuff and real-world stuff. Unfortunately, they’re also getting a bit fuzzy with their grammar.
lets blur some lines
Source: Thingiverse.com
In my TV post last week, I highlighted a few sites on which I’d seen a Bad Apostrophe or two, including GeekZenith. But as I was browsing around his site, I saw several more apostrophe problems in GZ’s stories. In fact, from the half-dozen posts that I clicked into, I found BAs in all but one of them. In short, he has a consistent problem with punctuation.
He really covers the gamut of types of Bad Apostrophes, too. From “it’s”…
… it’s much better counter part …
… it’s fifth season…
… to general possession…
… the terrorists unbridled love…
… to present-tense verbs…
… Sony let’s slip that their Amazing Spider-Man…
… flick Oblivion get’s official synopsis…
… to plurals…
Should the studio’s MAKE this happen…
he filmed his scene’s for the movie
… and even names.
… the ones who flagged up Thano’s making an appearance…
I’m sure that if I kept reading this guy’s site, I’d amass quite the collection of BAs — one to rival that of the Wired writers. But I don’t plan to go back, because aside from the apostrophe errors, he also had lots of other grammar problems and I didn’t find his writing particularly insightful.
Sources:
GeekZenith.com
GeekZenith.com
GeekZenith.com
GeekZenith.com
GeekZenith.com
GeekZenith.com
GeekZenith.com
Eric Farnsworth has sent us another Bad Apostrophe, putting him well ahead of any other submitter when it comes to sheer number of contributions. He’s always asking me, “Is this a BA, or is it correct?” Well this time, it certainly is a BA.
Obama let’s us vote …
I asked him where he found this political cartoon, and he replied, “from an annoying friend who’s about to get unfriended cuz that’s all she posts all day long… Oh wait, you meant originally… No. It was posted on one of those FB pages that’s nothing but funny crap people share.” I haven’t been able to track down an original source. If you know where this came from, please let me know in the comments.
A recent job posting on Craigslist caught my eye, not because I’m looking for employment, but because of the interesting punctuation that one of its sentences had.
Were not looking for someone that want's to play it safe, were looking for
I think three apostrophe mistakes in twelve words has to be a new record here. Congratulations, guys!
Source: Craigslist.org
Found on Geek.com, two examples of Bad Apostrophes.
First, a Non-Apostrophe from writer Ryan Whitwam (who claims to be a “lover of the em dash and defender of the Oxford comma.”) in his story about using physics to beat the odds at roulette.
... in the players favor...
Next, while I was checking out Ryan’s page, I saw a headline for another story (by writer Natalie Shoemaker) that troubled me:
... let's you to play...
True geeks wouldn’t write this sort of stuff, or allow it on their web sites.
We meet again.
I read Wired‘s “Webmonkey” and “Epicenter” blogs regularly, and I’ve found a few Bad Apostrophes there. I don’t get why these online properties owned by Condé Nast keep putting out all kinds of errors — you’d never see them in the print version of Wired magazine.
The most recent error comes from “Webmonkey” author Scott Gilbertson in his story about the release of Firefox 9.
"... gray background that let's you ..."
Source: Webmonkey.com
A recent blog post by Neil Patel on QuickSprout discussed 10 ways to get more people to retweet your stuff. He neglected to mention his most insidious trick for getting people to talk about you online — make a punctuation mistake and wait for all of the grammar geeks on the Internet to jump on you for it. In that very article, he included the following Bad Non Apostrophe:
"Time Peoples Tweets"
When I went looking for his Twitter handle to tweet him a link to this post, I also found this bad boy:
"Lets be friends"
I’m on to you, Patel. 
Source: QuickSprout.com
Another app review, another BA. This one from 148Apps’ Chris Hall:
"Ransom Notes is a simple little app that let’s you..."
Source: 148apps.com
A Network World article about a new feature in Spotify that allows to you to hide your Backstreet Boys listening habit from your Facebook friends contains the following Bad Apostrophe — a gaffe nearly as bad as letting slip that you still like a terrible boy band.
"... Private Browsing option in Web Browsers let’s you switch... "
It’s also worth noting that the article was written by Bob Brown, NW’s “Executive Editor, News” — if he’s supervising and fixing the writing of other writers, I’m a little bit scared.
Source: NetworkWorld.com
Update 14 October 2011 7:30 AM MDT: Bob Brown quickly responded to my email and removed the Bad Apostrophe. Great work, Bob!
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