Random language abuse

[tahnan]

I'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, which means that I am only interested in describing how people use language and not in telling them that some things are right and others wrong. But.

Two recent misuses so egregious that I can't be the only one who suffers from having seen them:

1. Poking around the Lipton Tea website, looking for their recommendation for sun-brewed tea which I've never tried to make, I find: "Choose among a stunning variety of teas to find one that will suit your palette as well as your mood."

Never mind that I hate advertizing copy and that I'm not stunned by six green teas and twelve black teas. Mostly I'm wondering what artists out there are trying to match teas to the colors they use.

Malapropisms aren't uncommon, particularly when the two words are homophones, but that sort of mistake in the advertizing section of a company's website strikes me as more inexcusable than most.

2. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that told me to "Invest in Jesus: his flock always goes up!" As a pun it's not too bad. The problem I had was not the sentiment, but the fact that the sixth word was, in fact, spelled "alway's". I think this is more or less covered by Rule Three of Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots, which I'm starting to feel tempted to print out and stick under windshield wipers or hand to merchants.

Comments

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

You don't think the Lipton Tea one was deliberate?

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Having poked through the site: I don't give them that much credit, no. It seems much more likely to me that they just don't know their homonyms apart than that they're trying to make some sort of clever color-based "green/black tea" pun.

[saxikath]

I think the "alway's" error is actually part of a separate category: "If a word ends in an S, put an apostrophe before it."

[fuldu.livejournal.com]

I think much of the difficulty with apostrophes on plural words comes from the modern profusion of acronyms.

Begin excerpted text

Forming plurals
Use 's to form the plural of lowercase letters, of numbers, of abbreviations followed by periods, and of words referred to as words.

His b's look like 6's.
M.A.'s
Her l's are illegible and her miss's look like mess's.
Ph.D.'s

When needed to avoid confusion, use 's to form plurals of capital letters, of symbols, and of abbreviations not followed by periods. Either 's or s may be used to form such plurals as the following:

the 1900's or the 1900s
his 7's or his 7s
two B's or two Bs.

End excerpted text

The combined profusion of TLA's and the fact that that's a correct plural of TLA has desensitized people to which apostrophic usages are right and which are wrong. To my mind, the plural 's should only be used when absolutely necessary. The problem is that most of the examples above have some legitimate reason for using the apostrophe, though I never see the need on a number.

[cnoocy]

In my opinion, (and I'm aware that I'm not a style guide) unless you're restricted to plain text, there is no need to ever use a plural 's. And even then there's always ".

His bs look like 6s.
M.A.s
Her "l"s are illegible and her "miss"s look like "mess"s.
Ph.D.s