NRHEG Star Eagle

137 Years Serving the New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva Area
Newspaper of Record for NRHEG School District
Newspaper of Record for Waseca County, MN
PO Box 248 • New Richland, MN 56072

507-463-8112
email: steagle@hickorytech.net
Published every Thursday
Yearly Subscription: Waseca, Steele, and Freeborn counties: $52
Minnesota $57 • Out of state $64

When we become parents, we sign a letter of intent to embarrass our children every opportunity that arises. I’ve been fulfilling that agreement to an extreme.

See, I get distraught when I see a sign in a business that has a grammatical mistake. I can’t help it; I’m an English major! It doesn’t help that I read a book called The Great Typo Hunt about two friends who crossed the country, correcting mistakes on signs, sometimes whether the store owner wanted them to or not!

Inspired by that, I’ve taken it upon myself to point out these mistakes to businesses whenever I see them, even if my wife or kids are with me. One of my pet peeves is the misuse of words on bathrooms. Okay, if you have one man, it’s man. If you have more than one, it’s men. The same goes for woman: one is a woman; more than one is women.

Thus, if you want to show possession of the bathroom, you need an apostrophe. If women possess the bathroom, it’s the women’s room. If men possess the bathroom, it’s the men’s room. Yet over and over, I see womens and mens rooms.

Naturally, I take it on myself to tell the proprietors or managers that there are no such words as womens or mens. Half of them look at me quizzically; the other half give me the same look your average teenager does when you suggest they change a bad habit.

If you visit the Target dressing rooms in Owatonna, the Kohl’s bathrooms in Owatonna, or the Perkins restrooms in Austin, you will find these mistakes. I even saw it at Crazy Horse National Monument when we visited South Dakota a couple of years ago! At least there when I mentioned it to an employee, she said, “I know. I used to be a college professor, but they won’t even listen to me!”

Michelle works at a sign company. She’s very good with grammar (one of the many reasons I was attracted to her!), but occasionally she will send me the wording of a sign to make sure it’s correct. I remember at least one time when she told the owner who wanted the sign that she had to change the punctuation, and he demanded she leave it as it was. She tried to explain why it was wrong, but you know the saying: the customer is always right! Except when they’re really, really wrong!

I’m being really careful as I type this since I’ve noticed many apostrophes in my writing, especially in the use of “it’s.” Here’s another mistake I see all over. It’s really pretty simple. If you can insert “it is,” you use an apostrophe. If it’s possessive, you do not use an apostrophe.

It’s ironic that as I started typing this column, I also started a chat with my old colleague, Heather Carlson. She knows one of my teeth-gritting apostrophe items well. It has to do with Christmas cards. If you’re reading this in October, there is plenty of advance warning to make sure you get it right this year! (If you don’t, don’t worry. We’ll still hang up your card!)

When people sign their Christmas cards, they like to include the family name. Since there is usually more than one person in the family, they will write the plural version. For instance, we will sign ours “The Domeiers.”

And here’s the rub. People sometimes get crazy with their apostrophes. Perish forbid they use them in “it’s” or “women’s,” but you’ll see more often than not a Christmas card signed with an apostrophe in the last name. Here’s something you will never see: “The Domeier’s.” That would indicate there’s only one Domeier, and that this person owns something that hasn’t been named.  Plus, this person thinks so highly of him/herself that the article “The” is used, as if this person is the only one!

Don’t feel like you have to put an apostrophe after your plural last name either. You’re still not owning anything. You’re simply a plural entity. “The Domeiers” is just fine (unless you’re not a Domeier, in which case you should put your own last name!).

Wow, can you tell I’ve been correcting essays and papers? I’ve got punctuation on the brain. Enough for now; class is dismissed!

Word of the Week: This week’s word is orthography, which means the practice of spelling correctly, as in, “The teacher demanded his students use orthography, meaning they had to spell the pronoun you as more than one letter.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!


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