A spelling Comic

Not a lot of content here, but it’s on topic…

I counted five spelling errors, not counting the comma.

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I’ve heard of two grammar errors frequently attributed to grocers. One is putting unnecessary quotes around words in signs. The other is incorrect apostrophes to make plurals.

I don’t think the skunk is a grocer, but that’s the error. Maybe the cartoonist wanted to make the skunk seem lower class, no offense to grocers. Next-to-last panel:

The rule: You don’t need an apostrophe for plurals!

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

The rule he gets right has to do with the apostrophe when you want to make a word possessive.

If the word you want to make possessive ends in “s,” just add an apostrophe; don’t add another “s.”

Last panel:

But you pronounce the possessive as if that second “s” were there! So it sounds like “Joneses.”

A head locker room attendant is a janitor, right?

This post first appeared on The Writing Rag.

When we take a letter out of a word, we replace it with an apostrophe, and call the result a contraction. Here’s a contraction I don’t think I’ve run into. Last panel…

I suppose you can delete the “h” from “him” and replace it with an apostrophe…

Okay, so where does the apostrophe go?

Not before the “s,” not after the “s.” You remove it! This is another of those uncommon cases in English where you put the adjective after the noun, such as “court martial” and “attorney general.”

Can you think of any others?