"Louie Riel Day"

Today is Louis Riel Day in Manitoba, a statutory holiday, so stores are open fewer hours than they would normally be. This sign was posted on the door of a major retailer in Winnipeg last week (and by major retailer, I mean possibly the world's largest retailer).

In Public Relations classes in the Creative Communications program at Red River College, we teach students to go to the source to find the correct spelling of a name. If you're writing about a film, go to the production company's website, not IMDb. If you're writing about a politician, go to his/her campaign materials, not the local newspaper. Don't trust someone else not to have made an error; go to the source.

But if the source has been dead more than a century, where do you go? You have to figure out who's most reliable. Wikipedia makes it easy to find information about millions of topics quickly, but is every detail you'll find there reliable? You don't know for sure.

Louis Riel Day is officially recognized by the Government of Manitoba -- so in this case, that'd be your official source.

Apostrophes apostrophes apostrophes!

This email arrived in my inbox this week, advertising a seminar at which I could learn "best practices" in internal communications. Given that the email contains two apostrophe errors in the first couple of lines, I'm not going to put too much stock in the sender's expertise in best communication practices.

Error #1: "employee's attention"

The apostrophe before the "s" indicates we're talking about the attention of one employee. In this case, though, we're most likely talking about multiple employees' attention -- so the apostrophe should follow the "s."

Error #2: "employees attention"

This is the same case as above -- just a different error, because the writer left the apostrophe off altogether.

Both sentences should say "...fighting to get your employees' attention."

This one is a little trickier:

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The writer knows to use an apostrophe after the "s" when showing possession of a plural word -- but there's an exception if the plural word doesn't end in "s."

If this was the babies' corner, or the girls' corner, or the owners' corner, this apostrophe would be fine. These are plural words that end in "s." But the plural noun "men" doesn't end in an "s," so we show possession the same way we would with a singular noun (by adding apostrophe "s"): men's corner.

This writer's problem is spelling:

Apostrophe "s" isn't used to pluralize nouns, though you see it all the time. For example:

While it might seem simple to just add the "s" to "tee" to pluralize it ("Custom Tees" is correct), the journalist above forgot the rule about pluralizing nouns that end in "y."

To pluralize "company," you'd remove the "y" and replace it with "ies" ("companies").

Here are last week's apostrophe resource links again:

For an easy-to-read-and-understand primer on how to use the apostrophe, Grammar Girl offers a great series of posts -- and when you need a quick reference with a laugh on the side, check out The Oatmeal.

"Tenants lounge"

This is the first of what I suspect will be a series of posts on misused apostrophes.

My completely unscientific research suggests the apostrophe is the most commonly-misused punctuation mark (in Canada and the U.S., at least) -- and it's important to use your apostrophes correctly, because they play such an important role in communicating meaning.

Is this hotel lounge named for a family named "Tenants?" If so, the sign is fine.

If not, we likely need an apostrophe in the name.

If the lounge is intended for one tenant, it would more accurately be named "Tenant's Lounge" (apostrophe before the possessive "s"). It's the lounge meant for that one tenant.

If, as is more likely, the lounge is for any of the hotel's tenants to use, it should be called the "Tenants' Lounge" (apostrophe after the pluralizing "s"), since it's the lounge meant to be used by all the tenants (plural).

For an easy-to-read-and-understand primer on how to use the apostrophe, Grammar Girl offers a great series of posts -- and when you need a quick reference with a laugh on the side, check out The Oatmeal on the topic.

Thanks to Chris Lee for spotting this sign!

"I could care less"

I often hear people saying they "could care less" about something, meaning they don't care at all.

"I could care less whether it's raining tomorrow; I'm wearing my shiny new rain boots even if the sun is shining."

The problem with this is that, if you could care less, you must care at least somewhat... in which case the expression contradicts what you mean. If you could care less, you could care anywhere from slightly to as much as one could possibly care about something.

If you want to communicate that you don't care about something, and you want to use this expression, say "I couldn't care less."

That makes it clear: you care as little as it is possible to care.

"GET-A-WAY!"

I think this travel brochure meant to offer a quiet getaway... I'm not sure what a "get-a-way" is.

And, while we're at it!

My students know I have a prejudice against exclamation marks in all but the rarest of cases. The Excessive Exclamation!! blog (in my blogroll at right) provides an excellent explanation:

The exclamation point is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume (shouting), and often marks the end of a sentence. Example, "Watch Out!" A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is an actual exclamation ("Wow!", "Boo!"), the imperative mood ("Stop!"), or intended to be astonishing or show astonishment ("They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!). Overly frequent use of the exclamation mark is generally considered poor writing, for it distracts the reader and reduces the mark's meaning. And, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes."

The content of your writing should generate excitement, not your punctuation; writing that attempts to generate excitement through exclamation points seems unpolished (and less credible than it might otherwise be).

Whenever you're tempted to use an exclamation point in professional writing, challenge yourself to use the message to excite the reader. That'll have more impact.

Is it washed or isn't it?

This note on a bag of romaine lettuce advises English speakers to wash the lettuce before eating it -- but tells French speakers it's already been washed (though phrased awkwardly).

Bilingual packaging requirements in Canada open the door to a wide range of errors: you need good proofreaders for the English, good proofreaders for the French... and in some cases, good proofreaders who are adept in both languages.

The PR Major had a great discussion this week, led by Erika Miller, about Coca-Cola's vitaminwater promotion-gone-wrong, in which the company inadvertently printed offensive statements on its bottle caps because of unanticipated pairings of English and French words.

Translation isn't just about getting out your French-English dictionary or using Google Translate. Over the years I've heard people say "I speak French so I can do the translations." Mistake.

Would you have anyone who speaks English write your corporate materials? Of course you wouldn't. You'd hire a writing specialist, if you wanted them to be good.

Unless you are a professional translator, hire a professional translator.

"Cheating... are becoming"

My brother sent this headline from an Ottawa daily newspaper last week:

This headline contains an error in subject-verb agreement. In any sentence, the number of a verb has to match the number of its subject.

To determine the correct form of the verb, we would ask ourselves, "what is/are becoming more creative?"

The answer is "cheating," which is singular. For correct subject-verb agreement, the sentence should read, "Cheating at Ottawa schools is becoming more creative each day," since "is becoming" is the singular form of the verb.

If we re-worded the sentence slightly, and "cheaters" became the subject of the verb "becoming," it would be a different story (and likely, a more accurate statement, since cheating can't really be creative -- only cheaters can). In that case, we would say "Cheaters at Ottawa schools are becoming more creative each day." The plural subject ("cheaters") would call for a plural verb ("are becoming").

Thanks for the tip, Chris!