My wife spotted this on an envelope.
Problem:
The contraction is missing an apostrophe.
Explanation:
“WERE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!” was stamped in red beneath a business’s old address in the return-address section of an envelope.
The business obviously had a lot of envelopes that had been printed with its old address in the return-address section, and beneath that section the business had stamped a new message in red to let envelope recipients know one of the following:
- The business was in the process of moving.
- The business had already moved.
The new address appeared — also in red — beneath “WERE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!”, so that envelope recipients would have the new address of the business.
The problem with the red-stamp headline is that it is missing an apostrophe.
When one creates a contraction — in this case from the pronoun “WE” plus the verb “ARE” — an apostrophe must be included to indicate the letter or letters that one has removed to create the contraction.
I believe that the omission of the apostrophe is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit an apostrophe than to include one.
Solution:
“WE’RE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!”