A nine year old deaf girl has made local headlines after spotting 15 examples of punctuation errors during a 15 minute walk around a Yorkshire town – including Yorkshire staples such as pies, pasties and cakes.
Extract below:
A NINE-YEAR-OLD schoolgirl found 15 examples of the incorrect use of apostrophes during a 15-minute walk in Keighley.
As part of a school project, Ammarah Mahmood, who is deaf, wandered around the market and surrounding area looking for mistakes – specifically the ‘apostrophe-S’ – on signage.
And the youngster, a pupil at Swain House Primary School in Bradford, was shocked at what she found.
The errors she spotted included: Banana’s; Happy Holiday’s; No Drink’s Allowed in Shop; Pie’s, Pasty’s, Sandwich’s and Cakes; DVD’s; Customers For Taxi’s Please Wait Here; Toilet’s and Open Sunday’s.
Read the full story here: http://m.keighleynews.co.uk/news/13902009.Keighley_s_apostrophe_shame/?ref=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
With thanks to @TomTeds on Twitter.
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Razzie
November 2, 2015
Not surprised – I could catch countless errors in emails and circulars composed by managers at my office! But not in a position to draw their attention ….. For obvious reasons – that they would not handle being corrected by a profoundly deaf person without speech!
deaflinguist
November 3, 2015
Why not? There is no correlation between the ability to speak and the ability to produce perfectly grammatical English (or other languages). The one is a physical function, the other is a skill (we’re all hard-wired to acquire language and grammar, so in that sense it’s innate, but it’s developed through learning). Many deaf people may not physically speak so as to be understood by hearing people, but the words they speak or mouth are grammatically correct. Writing and spelling are different again. It’s the content that’s important, not the mechanical ability.
I too have noted how many managers suffer from poor spelling and grammar and lack of expressive ability, but how to draw attention to silly errors without making the other party feel foolish or belittled? Good communication skills are a valuable asset in the workplace, so if you’ve got good proofreading skills, ask if anyone can make use of your skills or if you can contribute to writing tasks as part of your professional development. That way you get known for your diplomatic skills too!
Rosie Malezer
November 2, 2015
Oh no…. heaven forbid that one of us Deafies is more knowledgeable in writing English than a hearing person! It is wonderful to see such a thing, and further disparages the myth that Deaf and stupid are one in the same – a belief which is very much alive here in Finland. Well done 🙂 xx
Sybil
November 2, 2015
Razzie, pointing that out would be insubordinate. Trust me on this one.
I think that’s great that any child can point those errors out!
I have always loved writing- when I see errors like that, it drives me nuts. If it’s a ‘country’ establishment (farmers market stand, small grocer or other small business,) I am much more forgiving than if it is something printed up or ‘professional.’ There is a restaurant nearby that is very ‘country’ but they have a catering/takeaway menu that drives me insane. There are so many errors……it makes me weep that neither the owners nor the printer fixed them before putting it out there as the face of their business.
It’s particularly galling because their name is sort of a play on the correct use of the apostrophe- as indicator of a missing letter as well as a possessive. I always thought it was cute that they were trying to be cute………the menu made me reconsider. Maybe they just didn’t know that the correct way to apostrophicize (probably not a word, but I like it) a word ending in X is just an apostrophe, not an apostrophe + s.
Deafnotdaft
November 3, 2015
There’s a movement afoot to ban apostrophes, not so much because they’re hard to get right but because they’re superfluous. Heavens above! What would we whinge about then? Using prepositions to end a sentence with?
Hartmut
November 5, 2015
Which is correct “for heavens sake”, “for heaven’s sake”, “for heavens’ sake”? :=)
I know which one is, but I let you folks (or folk’s?) decide. Have fun!