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Comment by reaperman | Hacker News Reader

I have this with spelling. Even a fractional glance at a poster/billboard/sign, without focusing my eyes on it, and certainly without reading a single word ... any misspelled word triggers a flag in my brain sort of "pinging" me with the precise location of the misspelled word.

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The grocer's apostrophe (which I will argue should be called the grocers'(1) apostrophe, since there are many offending grocers) is the bane of my existence

(1) My phone absolutely tried to correct that back to "grocer's"

If you want to make your existence slightly more irritating: Learn German and move to Germany. There the possessive s ending is written without an apostrophe - but there is an equivalent which then falsely writes the possessive with an apostrophe - the so-called Deppenapostroph (idiot's apostrophe).

What annoys me most about German vs English is that German has lots of English loanwords ending in "y" (e.g. "Party"), but it's officially not allowed to use the plural form that would be correct in English, e.g. "Parties" - you have to write "Partys". As a bonus, you could try using "Party's", but that would be incorrect again...

> which I will argue should be called

I think you're missing the joke of the name!

I don't think it's a joke. The possessive plural is a disaster in American English

Well, it is "a baker's dozen", right? Not "all the bakers' dozens". Since the phrase incorporates a reference to a single individual, as a representative concept for all bakers.

So "the grocer's apostrophe" makes sense as a phrase referring to a typical individual grocer with a typical atypical apostrophe, standing in as a representative for all grocers and all their darned grocers' apostrophes.

Maybe it should be the grocer's' apostrophe, since there are many offending grocer's.

Aaaagh, make it stop!

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