Thursday, March 26, 2009

Two Ways to Get It Wrong

Art found an apostrophe catastrophe in the print copy of Canada's Globe and Mail. See the headline in the screenshot below.


The comma is unnecessary, as well. Art noticed that the story was from the Associated Press, so he did some research to find out where the error originated. It turns out that the AP's original headline also used an incorrect apostrophe.


While it could be argued that Americans possess their spending and savings, I think the headline should be "Americans saving more, spending less" with an implied verb "are."

"I wonder what Canadians' are doing," Art quips.

Also, check out the name of the woman who is quoted in the article. Was Grace's maiden name so bad that she decided to go all Dr. Seuss after she got married?

Thanks, Art!

3 comments:

Flax said...

I want to be inside the head of the guy at the Globe and Mail who saw "Americans'" and thought, "That's not right." So he changed it to "American's" instead. That guy is a genius.

maryr said...

The top headline could be argued to contain an excess "n", rather than a superfluous apostrophe.

The earlier version kills that hope, though. No we cant.

Anonymous said...

The AP discontinued proofreading long ago. I see errors in practically every article they put out. Reuters is no better.