Month: March 2008

“Im out of Save/pay-by-mail envelopes.”

Apostrophes, Capitalization, Common English Blunders, Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler

I saw this on the back of a bank-by-mail envelope from my credit union.

Problems:
An apostrophe is missing from the contraction, and the verb used as an adjective should not be capitalized.

Explanation:
Whoever wrote what is printed on the back of the envelope was trying to use the contracted, everyday-speech form of “I am”.

Unfortunately, the contraction “Im” lacks the required apostrophe.

I believe that this is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” hypothesis.

It’s simpler to write “Im” than to write “I’m” (two keystrokes vs. three keystrokes).

I also believe that the increasingly common practice of dropping required apostrophes has been influenced by people’s experience with text messaging.

  • Given the typical limit of 160 characters in a text message, every character is precious, so dropping required apostrophes seems to many like a reasonable price to pay.
  • Also, text messaging on most cellular telephones, which don’t have full QWERTY keyboards, is tedious, so dropping required apostrophes lets users of the simpler phones avoid this tedium.

The other problem is that “Save” — a verb used as an adjective to modify “envelopes” — is capitalized when it should not be.

Unnecessary capitalization has become another common English blunder.

I see this unnecessary capitalization more with nouns than with adjectives.

Maybe American English is becoming more like German, or maybe American English speakers are losing their confidence in how to capitalize and therefore randomly capitalize words that don’t require it.

Solution:
“I’m out of save/pay-by-mail envelopes.”

“INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES UNIT & APPEAL’S”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Nouns, Possessives

I saw this yesterday on a San Quentin State Prison sign shown during an MSNBC television program.

Problem:
A possessive apostrophe appears where it should not.

Explanation:
“APPEAL’S” of what?

The apostrophe in “APPEAL’S” should not be there.

The sign maker was trying to refer to the plural of the noun “APPEAL”.

He or she instead made the sign maker’s common blunder of inserting a possessive apostrophe when pluralizing a noun.

Maybe sign makers just love to create apostrophes?

Solution:
“INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES UNIT & APPEALS”

“Authorizations will be expired on March 31.”

Verbs

This is a simplification of what I saw yesterday in an email message from a corporation.

Problem:
The transitive form of the verb “expire” is misused here.

Explanation:
Converting this statement from passive voice to active voice, we get the statement “We will expire authorizations on March 31.”

It’s clear in active voice that the statement is using the verb “expire” in transitive form. That is, “expire” takes the direct object “authorizations”.

There is only one non-archaic definition of the transitive form of the verb “expire”: to breathe out.

The statement “She expired one liter of CO2-rich air after holding her breath for a minute.” is a grammatically correct example that uses the transitive form of the verb “expire”.

So it should be clear that the corporation that sent the email message cannot “breathe out” the authorizations.

The corporation wanted to say that the authorizations would come to an end on March 31.

This requires the intransitive form of the verb “expire” (one used without an object), a definition of which is to terminate or come to an end.

Solution:
“Authorizations will expire on March 31.”