The greengrocers' apostrophe...

[Lardhelmet_2]

...saw a good one on a sign outside a shop in town today:

Furniture

Antiques

Sofa's

The sofa's what?

Have you seen any good ones recently?

[boxtops]

Yeah - get your nail's done here.....

[nightmare]

What always perplexes me about examples such as Lardhelmet's is why have they not also put one in "Antiques" ?
Sometimes, you see a list of plurals, some, but not all, of which have apostrophes.
How do they decide which plurals (erroneously) require one and which do not ?
They are not even consistent in their error.

[nescio]

I spotted a superb example of getting it completely wrong this evening.
Changing the name to Fred to avoid any trouble, it was a breakdown truck with the sign
"Freds Auto's" proudly displayed.

[mike11111]

In my first year of teaching I had a girl who put an apostrophe before the final "s" in any word, whether it made sense or not. All attempts at explaining the correct use having failed, the next time I received an essay I circled every example in red, so that there were two pages of virtually red ink. The girl's mother made an official complaint to the school, mainly on the grounds that I was her History teacher and not her English teacher, so it had nothing to do with me how she wrote.

[New Judge]

A strange, if not entirely unsurprising, reaction from the mother, Mike.

I think it must stem from the popular notion that children must be free to “express themselves” in any way they see fit and the idea that pedantic rules like those involving apostrophes are irrelevant.

The idea that teachers of any subject should not correct grammatical errors on the grounds that they are not English teachers is laughable. When I was at school, if my parents had seen my homework littered with such errors and they were uncorrected they would have been on to the headmaster immediately to demand the dismissal of my history teacher!

[ikarus]

Seen on a fruit and veg stall some years ago-

Neck terrine's

[Bert]

I think that some words, especially those ending in a vowel sound (not the silent -e of 'antique'), look a bit odd to poorly educated people when an -s is added for the plural. They therefore put an apostrophe before the -s, thinking it somehow looks 'better'.
Take, for instance, pianos, menus, sofas, cameras, minis - don't they all look a little odd? They look as though they should be pronounced differently from the words of which they are the plural with an added 'z'-sound. I recently met a librarian, who probably had a degree in English, who thought that the plural of census was census'. When I asked if she had a degree in English, she said, "What difference would it make if I had?"

[Buenchico]

I'll agree with Bert that there are some times when an apostrophe simply 'looks right'.

I was designing some publicity material for a friend's catering business and found myself requiring the plural of 'menu'. As soon a I typed 'menus' I could hear my brain pronouncing it as if it was a Latin word (i.e. 'men-us'). I inserted an apostrophe before the 's' and it looked fine but I was sure that couldn't be right. I ended up consulting several different books and phoning the staff of Ipswich Public Reference Library (who found they couldn't agree on an answer!) before deciding that I was right in the first place!

Chris

PS: There's a convenience store in central Brighton that always seems to have hand-written signs using greengrocers' apostrophes. They're placed alongside the carefully sign-written boards telling customers that they sell 'stationary' and that they're 'licenced' to sell alcohol ;-)

[Buenchico]

PPS:
Bert should have known not to expect anyone with a degree in English to be able to spell. I spent fifteen years in secondary teaching, where it was widely known that you went to the maths teachers if you needed a correct spelling (but under no circumstances did you ever ask them to add anything up!).

[cc1]

A new van with an expensive looking lettering job, carrying Dresse's.

Can I throw into the pedantic mix a detestation of 2.34p meaning £2.34, I once challenged this in A..A, but they couldn't see what was wrong.

[cc1]

Just read the comment above re asking the Maths teachers for the spelling but not the adding up, I was told by the English Department I was "too fussy" about spelling, but I still had to work out their percentages for them after exams, why they didn't devise a mark scheme out of 100 I could never understand.

[mike11111]

I agree. The p is redundant. The £ sign plus the decimal point tells the whole story.

[bobbie22]

saw potatoe's and tomatoe's outside a greengrocer.

[juandelacruz]

On the BBC news-lines at the bottom of the screen. Also in a letter (Guardian perhaps) criticising bad spelling These Days. That might be a newspaper typo, not the writer.