Capitalization

“… recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!”

Apostrophes, Capitalization, Common English Blunders, Foreign Languages, Nouns, Outsider's Perspective

I saw this in a message from a corporation to its employees yesterday.

Problems:
1. Two exclamation marks appear where only one should appear.
2. Common nouns are capitalized even though they should not be.
3. An apostrophe appears where it does not belong.

Explanation:
The corporate message encouraged readers to nominate others for recognition.

The full sentence was “Please be sure to recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!”

One problem with this sentence is the second exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, as if the first exclamation mark were insufficient.

Can you imagine putting two periods at the end of a sentence? That would be nonsensical, right? Putting two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence is just as nonsensical.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English.

Another problem is the capitalization of the two common nouns. There is nothing special about an “employee” or a “peer” that requires capitalization in this sentence.

Unfortunately, this also seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English, as if a huge contingency of Germans had moved to the U.S. and started to misapply the German approach to capitalization to all nouns in English.

The third problem is the most glaring. An apostrophe was inserted with the pluralization of “employee”, which is incorrect.

Solution:
“… recognize your employees and peers!”

“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.”

“On behalf of myself and other company Leaders, I want to thank you …”

Capitalization, Common English Blunders, Pronouns

I read this in an email message.

Problems:
1. Any first-person pronoun should go at the end of a list.
2. An “On behalf of” phrase should never include a first-person pronoun.
3. Reflexive pronouns should not be joined with other nouns.
4. Roles that are not job titles should not be capitalized.

Explanations:
1. One should put others first in a list. Here are two examples:
Incorrect: “He gave it to me and Jim.”
Correct: “He gave it to Jim and me.”
Incorrect: “I and Jim are downstairs.”
Correct: “Jim and I are downstairs.”

2. “On behalf of” implies that one party is doing something as a substitute, proxy, or delegate for another party. So “On behalf of myself” makes no sense and implies either an out-of-body experience or too much pride.

3. Even if problem #1 and problem #2 did not exist, it is incorrect to combine a reflexive pronoun (such as “myself”) with other nouns or noun phrases (such as “other company leaders”).

4. The word “Leaders” is not a job title — at least, not in the context of the problematic sentence — and therefore should not be used in this sentence as a proper noun. So it should not be capitalized.

Solution:
“On behalf of other company leaders, I want to thank you….”