Thursday, March 12, 2009

What is this blog about?

Appetizers, cutely shortened, is the one word I see most often butchered in menus, restaurant ads and billboards. Appy's (it should be appies -or I can even stomach appys) suggests that something belongs to the appy. "The appy's sauce was divine," or "The appy's spelling was incorrect," or maybe even "The appy's car was red."

I was in Australia in 2000, the passenger in a car driving by a four-story furniture store sporting a massive billboard that read, "SOFA'S". As we passed the corner, I turned and looked over my shoulder to see the same sign on the other side of the building: "SOFA'S". I couldn't help it - I groaned out a long, almost slow-motion, "Oh NOOOOOOooooooo......." For cryin' out loud - how much did they pay for those signs? Am I the only person who was offended? The chances of me buying a sofa in Australia were already zero - could I minus that?

Anyway, after I read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I realized that I was not alone in my uppity self-righteousness. I also realized that I'm nowhere near as clever and funny as the book's author, Lynne Truss. So I called my blog "There's No Apostrophe in Appy's" because the misuse of the apostrophe is one of my pet peeves, and it's likely to come up once in awhile. But I have no idea what this blog is really going to be about. As you can see, starting a sentence with a preposition is not a problem for me - I am all for artistic wiggle-room in some cases, and a grumpy stickler in others - so this blog can't really be about grammar and punctuation.

Let's just see what evolves. If the blog doesn't, maybe I will.

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