Apostrophes

An apostrophe to the rescue!

Apostrophes, Possessives

A few years ago I noticed something odd about the television ads, billboards, and signs for the Church’s Chicken restaurant chain.

The logo read “Churchs Chicken” without the required possessive apostrophe between the name “Church” and the letter “s”.

Here is an example of the apostrophe-less logo used by Church’s Chicken up until just a few years ago:

The absence of the apostrophe bugged me but also made me wonder whether the company was omitting the apostrophe for some sort of branding or legal reason.

For example, many trademark experts recommend against using possessives in brand names — and definitely against using a brand name (such as “Kodak”) as a possessive noun (such as “Kodak’s”).

Well the folks at Church’s Chicken apparently realized that the apostrophe-less logo was actually a mistake.

For example, here is an older logo that I found for Church’s Chicken:

As you can see, the older logo did have the apostrophe.

And here is how the Church’s Chicken logo appears at this writing — again with the possessive apostrophe:

So the restaurant chain had the possessive apostrophe, dropped it (for who knows why), and re-added it.

Thank you, Church’s Chicken, for saving the apostrophe!

“a student of mine’s mother”

Apostrophes, Possessives, Pronouns

I heard this the other day, and it struck me as odd — mostly because there is a bad habit among many American children to say “mines” instead of “mine”.

Problem:
A pronoun may not be converted into a possessive simply by adding apostrophe-“s”.

Explanation:
The archaic use of the word “mine” as a pronoun is as a substitute for “my” — as in “Mine eyes have seen the glory …”.

But the word “mine” as a pronoun has two modern meanings:

  1. a predicate-adjective form of the possessive case of the pronoun “I”, as in “The green car is mine.”;
  2. something belonging to me, as in “Mine is the purple towel.”

I am unsure whether the “mine” in “a student of mine’s mother” more closely follows definition #1 or definition #2.

Concentrating on the first part of the phrase, one could argue that the “mine” in “a student of mine” follows definition #1 because one could say, “The student is mine.”

Or one could argue that the “mine” in “a student of mine” follows definition #2 because one could say, “Mine is the student.”

No matter which argument makes more sense to you, it is clear that “mine” in “a student of mine’s mother” is a pronoun.

And a pronoun may not be converted into a possessive simply by adding apostrophe-“s”, so the phrase must be rewritten.

Solution:
“the mother of one of my students”
OR
“one of my students’ mothers”

“WERE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!”

Apostrophes, Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler

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!”