Come on people. Its "just" typography.

November 24, 2016 2:20 PM

These quotation marks are why I have "trust" issues. Apostrophe's can be abused. A missing comma? Fucking a dude, can't beat that.
posted by Johnny Wallflower (83 comments total)

You have cleared up nothing.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:29 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

"lol"
posted by glonous keming at 2:31 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Is it "free" or ""free""?
Corner Gas woooo!
posted by bleep at 2:38 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

shit a hole in my yoga pants

are they still usable
posted by Sebmojo at 2:46 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

My supervisor at work often ends declarative sentences in memos with a question mark? I find it very hard to read? But he's my supervisor so I can't say anything about it?
posted by hippybear at 2:47 PM on November 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

Really?
posted by Burn_IT at 2:50 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Really?"
posted by parki at 2:53 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Your supervisor? Is he mathowie?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:58 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

you won a new toyoda!
posted by lalochezia at 3:17 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

They're for "emphasis"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:37 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Clearly there is a camp that uses quotation for "emphasis," and so the most important word of the sentence just winds up reading as "dubious."
posted by little onion at 3:37 PM on November 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

The skydiving ad doesn't really get any better if you remove the quotation marks. Skydive from our perfectly good airplane? It should literally go without saying.
posted by BinGregory at 3:40 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

How did I end up educated in how to use punctuation marks correctly while others did not? This is a thing I don't understand.

I'm not being snarky about this. This genuinely puzzles me.
posted by hippybear at 3:40 PM on November 24, 2016 [20 favorites]

Hippybear: I think when you were taught, you got it and; others didnt
posted by fullerine at 3:43 PM on November 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

Skydive from our perfectly good airplane?

It's an aviation joke. Pilots wonder why anyone would jump from a perfectly good airplane. The quotes are arguably appropriate, actually.



Q: What's a good landing?
A: One where you can walk away.
Q: What's a great landing?
A: One where you can reuse the aircraft.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:53 PM on November 24, 2016 [19 favorites]

How did I end up educated in how to use punctuation marks correctly while others did not? This is a thing I don't understand.

I'm pretty happy with the integrity of my education when it comes to these things, but there was one day that I checked out mentally on unit conversions, and it's been following me around like a sad puppy for the rest of my life.
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:22 PM on November 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

Rachael Ray
finds inspiritation
in cooking
her family
and her dog.

This is the inevitable slippery slope of discounting the benefits afforded by the Oxford comma.
posted by SpacemanStix at 4:33 PM on November 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

I admit I still have trouble with weird edge cases involving nested quotation marks and other punctuation.

"He just kept quoting old song lyrics at me," she said. "He was like, 'In the words of Sparks, "When do I get to sing 'My Way'?"'"
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:45 PM on November 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

That sentence melted a hole in my iPad screen. Not cool, dude.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:57 PM on November 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

That's a great exercise Faint of Butt. The only alleviation I could offer is italics for a title.

I'm fond of this illustration:

Teacher's Manual
Teachers' Manual
Teachers Manual

My old school training prefers the first example and dismisses the second because it implies there's a single manual many teachers use, but I was surprised how few people agreed with me. More people preferred the second because its use of an apostrophe is the one "most people forget". The final example was sourced by a Google survey.

Now, I'll defend the first example to the death because every instance of a published copy belongs to the teacher it is given-- that's clear to me, but not others. And the misuse of the second example I've already expressed. The third example...I would swear it was a solution of someone exhausted by arguments over the first two...

I love instances of true editorial choice, and I don't believe this is one, but others did.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 5:11 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

The extent to which we shouldn't be pedantic about such things is revealed by how often the major style guides will take a look at a sentence like that, Faint of Butt, and recommend one rewrites the sentence to avoid such edge cases. There just isn't a universal mathematical ruleset that will always produce "correct" writing.
posted by traveler_ at 5:12 PM on November 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

(Incidentally, the most interesting thing to me in that example was the use of quotative like.)
posted by traveler_ at 5:16 PM on November 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Following on from lazycomputerkids's point, I own a book entitled "Guitar Players Repair Guide" which always amuses me, because it does not in fact teach you how to repair guitar players.
posted by Dysk at 5:18 PM on November 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

We are unfixable and proud of it.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:19 PM on November 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I have a mini white board on my door at work, it has read for a week or two now the following:

The dangers of an apostrophe:

Love trumps hate

Or

Love Trump's hate

Don't do the latter
posted by JoeXIII007 at 5:48 PM on November 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

"Nice" "thread" "you've" "got" "here" "," "it'd" "be" "a" "shame" "if" "something" "were" "to" "happen" "to" "it" "."
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 5:49 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

"I hate you. I hate all of you!" he said, hi's face uncontrollably twitching.
posted by prismatic7 at 5:59 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

A missing comma is responsible for the dirtiest #1 song in history.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:09 PM on November 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

President's' "Day"
posted by BungaDunga at 6:20 PM on November 24, 2016

I will just put in a sideways comment here mentioning one of my most favorite ever mashups, Knock Out Eileen.
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM on November 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

This is a fun-ass thread.
posted by traveler_ at 6:24 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Following on from lazycomputerkids's point, I own a book entitled "Guitar Players Repair Guide" which always amuses me, because it does not in fact teach you how to repair guitar players.

You get them to turn down by putting sheet music in front of them....
posted by thelonius at 6:26 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

You get them to turn down by putting sheet music in front of them....

And if they are drowning, throw em their amp
posted by Morpeth at 6:34 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty happy with the integrity of my education when it comes to these things, but there was one day that I checked out mentally on unit conversions, and it's been following me around like a sad puppy for the rest of my life.

Speaking as someone who works in healthcare, you would be horrified to know how often nurses mistakenly document pounds as kilograms or vice versa in electronic medical records. The conversion factor is 2.2, meaning there's a greater than two-fold difference between the two.

Some drugs require weight-based dosing. The computer system automatically calculates the appropriate dose. Guess where it gets those numbers.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:39 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks
posted by Wild_Eep at 7:10 PM on November 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Actually, it's not so much typography as copy editing. ;)
posted by rikschell at 7:16 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have spent hours and hours arguing with editors and clients about Facilitators Guide, Facilitator's Guide and Facilitators' Guide. As with the Teacher's Manual above, I do not see how anyone could choose anything but the Facilitator's Guide.

I worked with a co-worker who considered commas to be clutter. She would come out with the galley, ready to go to the printer, and would ask me to circle any egregious errors. But I was not allowed to note egregious errors involving commas and was told I was just adding clutter.

And that is why Rachael Ray cooks her dog and her family, I'm sure. (But you don't need an Oxford commas for that, I promise. Just a comma and some EVOO.)
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 8:30 PM on November 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

That first link will be wonderfully useful for the writing course I teach to engineers. Grammar is a dry topic, so my PowerPoint is liberally sprinkled with pictures from CakeWrecks, memes, Facebook jokes and other examples of Doing Grammar Wrong.

The weirdest thing about that class is that every different group laughs or doesn't laugh at different jokes. I can never be sure which joke will land so I've started refreshing my examples more. So again, thank you; this will be extremely helpful to me.
posted by emjaybee at 9:02 PM on November 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Apostrophe's can be abused.

Unremarked on in that link is that an informational sign about the uses of the bandana also spells it bandanna two words later.

My apostrophe story, which I feel I will never have a more appropriate moment than now to relate: earlier this year I travelled to London, Ontario to see a play about Richard Manuel, pianist and frequent lead singer of The Band. The play, Manuel, had been a labour of love for the playwright, who had tried for years to have it staged. The play traced Manuel's life from his childhood near London, through the years of The Band's success, to his eventual death in 1986.

I first heard about it through a newspaper article talking about the playwright's tireless efforts to bring it to the stage and how finally it was here. The headline:

The Band Play's On

Normally a blunder, but in this case a cruelly calculated effort to needle copy editors everywhere.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:25 PM on November 24, 2016 [32 favorites]

The uncomplicated soups of my childhood wrote "'Nice' 'thread' 'you've' 'got' 'here' ',' 'it'd' 'be' 'a' 'shame' 'if' 'something' 'were' 'to' 'happen' 'to' 'it' '.' [sic]".

"There is one type of soup that is literate and simple: alphabet soup!" I exclaimed, ignoring the veiled threat.
posted by sylvanshine at 9:39 PM on November 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

So let's try this, as it was explained to me when I worked at a paper in Indiana:

driver's license = a license for a particular driver
drivers' license = a license more than one driver is using
drivers license = a license for driving

The first two show ownership via the apostrophe; the third refers to a class of license, this one being used by all drivers.

The issue can be avoided by calling it a driving license, but get 50 BMVs to go along with that.
posted by bryon at 10:42 PM on November 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Here's how my dear departed mother explained apostrophes to me. It seems to work.

Apostrophes always mark places where something has been left out.

The apostrophe in a possessive form is actually standing in for the missing e in the archaic suffix es, which is itself best thought of as a contraction of the word its or his. So cortex's dubious puns is a contraction of cortexes dubious puns which is itself a contraction of cortex his dubious puns.

The word it's is a contraction of it is or it has depending on context. Applying it as a possessive would therefore ultimately make it a contraction of it its which is clearly redundant.

When constructing the possessive form of a plural, the apostrophe marks the place where the entirety of their - being the plural form of its or his - has been elided: grammar nazis' obsessions is best thought of as a contraction of grammar nazis their obsessions and their doesn't end with an s, so abbreviating it as 's as in grammar nazis's makes no sense.

According to this particular Just So story it's the shape of the word that's gone missing, not the one it's attached to, that determines whether to use an s' or s's possessive suffix: this is why thelonius's is indeed the correct possessive form of the singular thelonius, style guides be damned.

The consequences of the fact that her also doesn't end with an s are left as an exercise for the reader.
posted by flabdablet at 11:14 PM on November 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

The Marley Conundrum:

"No woman, no cry"
"No, woman, no cry"
posted by Mister Bijou at 11:50 PM on November 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

I can understand people who never develop a sense for how to use commas or apostrophes--commas especially, which are more complicated.

What really confuses me is the quote marks. It's not that they're just lazy or ignorant; they're following a different rule, one I never learned. It's like they're living in a parallel universe where quote marks should be used to mark emphasis and children read books about the Berenstein bears.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:06 AM on November 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Marley Conundrum:

"No woman, no cry"
"No, woman, no cry"

Or "No woman, no, cry" (as an imperative).
posted by Dysk at 2:31 AM on November 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

The thing about the use of quotation marks for emphasis is interesting though. It's almost like an archaic survival of an older form of punctuation, and it illustrates that the boundaries between quoted text and text we'd want to emphasise is thinner than we might think.

The modern form of inline quotation only really became standard in printed books in the 1780s or so. Until then, quoted text was marked by a set of quotation marks in the left-hand margin, with no right-handed closing quotation mark. There was actually a rather fluid continuum between this mode of punctuation and the older, commonplacing notation, whereby a quotation mark signalled a particularly pithy maxim or saying, and was a kind of memory aid or signalling device. Grammar books and punctuation primers start to prescribe the use of quotation marks for citational purposes from about 1680 onwards, but in practice the two modes (commonplacing and quoted text) continue to overlap for at least a century thereafter.

Laura Estill lays it all out quite nicely here in her entry, "Commonplace Markers and Quotation Marks," in The Architecture of the Book:

As their name implies, commonplace markers point out commonplaces (sometimes called sententiae): words of wisdom or well-phrased ideas. These maxims are generally short enough to be easily memorized or quickly jotted into a personal miscellany or commonplace book. Indeed, commonplace markers indicate explicitly that others should consider quoting the marked words. As Margreta de Grazia elegantly explains, quotation marks function in a way that contrasts with commonplace markers: commonplace markers "signalled communal ground" whereas quotation marks "serve to fence in a passage as property of another." For centuries, inverted commas served the dual role of showing quoted speech and suggesting speech to be quoted—and, in some rare cases, this punctuation functions as both commonplace markers and quotation marks.

Modern readers may never think about the purpose of quotation marks, but their evolution into today's standardized usage occurred over the span of centuries and continues to change. The meaning of those ubiquitous double inverted commas cannot be taken for granted: beyond offering quotations and highlighting commonplaces, this punctuation can indicate the tone of a passage, a speaker's emotions, or important points to remember. Commonplace markers and quotation marks can change the meaning of a text in both predictable and unexpected ways.

posted by Sonny Jim at 2:53 AM on November 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

The thing about the use of quotation marks for emphasis is interesting though. It's almost like an archaic survival of an older form of punctuation, and it illustrates that the boundaries between quoted text and text we'd want to emphasise is thinner than we might think.

Well here's a question - how long have "scare quotes," as a way to call attention to use of a term that might not be legitimate or is not endorsed by the author, been common usage in English? I've found info about the history of the term but less about the history of that usage, which only sometimes involves an actual quotation.
posted by atoxyl at 3:39 AM on November 25, 2016

All I know is I was never taught to avoid using quotation marks for emphasis, instead I vividly recall my various Common Grammatical Errors lessons focusing on things like "Don't say 'took sick', say 'became ill'."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:02 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

how long have "scare quotes," as a way to call attention to use of a term that might not be legitimate or is not endorsed by the author, been common usage in English?

In America? Increasingly, during the past eight years. (The Obama Years.) See FOXNews.
posted by Mister Bijou at 4:05 AM on November 25, 2016

"A thousand dollars? But your ad says Works on Contingency. No Money Down."
"Oh! They got this all screwed up... [corrects ad to say: Works on Contingency? No, Money Down!]"
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:06 AM on November 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Clearly there is a camp that uses quotation for "emphasis," and so the most important word of the sentence just winds up reading as "dubious."

It is definitely a thing here in the UK; I see a lot of signs saying things like 'Try our "home cooked" food'

(And the comma inside the quotes, too. Don't often see that nowadays)
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 4:09 AM on November 25, 2016

A missing comma is responsible for the dirtiest #1 song in history.

I've always been rather partial to "What is this thing called, love?"
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 4:11 AM on November 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

... how long have "scare quotes," as a way to call attention to use of a term that might not be legitimate or is not endorsed by the author, been common usage in English?

It's a really interesting question, and I have to admit I'm really only familiar with the literature on 17th- and 18th-century quotation mark use. I think maybe Marjorie Garber talks about it a bit in her 2000 book, Quotation Marks? This 2014 article from Inside Higher Ed is interesting too on current writing patterns involving use of quotation marks for other purposes than indicating quotes and quoted speech, and the possible reasons behind them.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:17 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

And the comma inside the quotes, too. Don't often see that nowadays.

That's Chicago style. One can get very attached to it.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:28 AM on November 25, 2016

The picture of the cake that says "Thanks for being our "Dad"" - I think they used it correctly!
It looks like a 20th birthday cake, possibly for an RA or other student leader type. Someone you would jokingly call "dad" because he's two years older than the rest of the group.
posted by easternblot at 5:14 AM on November 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bob's quick guide to the apostrophe, you idiots

I “think” it “might„ be «useful».
posted by farlukar at 5:29 AM on November 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Well here's a question - how long have "scare quotes," as a way to call attention to use of a term that might not be legitimate or is not endorsed by the author, been common usage in English?

I'd love to hear an in-depth exploration of this.

It's also worth noting that the humor in most of the misused quotation mark examples rely on the reader assuming intended scare quotes. They're fantastically funny. But, there's also something a bit strange about making fun of poor grammar in a way that assumes usage that is also decried by some as poor grammar. (Those people are wrong, of course. Scare quotes are perfect and efficient analogues for the spoken phrase "so called," which is entirely sensible and makes no reference to a direct quote. "Experts" who find scare quotes confusing really ought to "retire," if you ask me.)

Using quotation marks for emphasis seems really strange, as others have said. Screwing up the possessive and plural "its" makes perfect sense; it's an arbitrary rule that seems, at first glance, inconsistent with other grammar rules. But quotes-as-emphasis just seems to come out of nowhere. It's even weirder when I see people with whom I grew up and attended school using it. (I can only assume that during our formative years they were participating in a living culture while I was busy reading musty old books.)

However, it's not fundamentally *different* than some of the choices I would make. If italics can serve ten different roles in the English language, why not quotes as well? Putting asterisks around words is no less a recent and non-standard invention. In a post-ASCII world, it doesn't really make much sense. But I continue to do it, 'cause it feels normal to me. If I were making up rules from scratch, picking some sort of enclosing marks for emphasis makes a lot more sense than italics or underlines, both of which make the important text less readable.
posted by eotvos at 5:58 AM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Could a possible source of quotation marks for emphasis be that, when reading silently, text presented between quotation marks comes across in a different "voice"? That's an odd choice of word, but at least for me it's definitely true that quoted text jumps out at me from the stream of words as they form in my mind. If that's a common experience, then it makes sense to use quotation marks for emphasis because that's what they're already doing, at least as a side-effect.

As an aside, I wish there were a commonly-accepted form of quotation mark to explicitly mean "This text is a paraphrase, not a direct quote".
posted by metaBugs at 6:42 AM on November 25, 2016

I think quotes-as-emphasis comes from old style typewriters, where bold and italic were not options, and underline was an intermittent feature.

Screwing up the possessive and plural "its" makes perfect sense; it's an arbitrary rule that seems, at first glance, inconsistent with other grammar rules. 

It's: you're :: its: hers
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:05 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's: you're :: its: hers

Well, sure. But also

it's : you're :: its : her

and for that matter

it's: Amy's :: its : Amy's

Trying to work out which one is right from either first principles or pattern matching seems challenging.
posted by eotvos at 8:53 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Screwing up the possessive and plural "its" makes perfect sense; it's an arbitrary rule that seems, at first glance, inconsistent with other grammar rules.

But it IS consistent with the grammar rule that pronouns, when owning something, do not use an apostrophe.

him her it
his hers its
posted by hippybear at 8:54 AM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Putting asterisks around words is no less a recent and non-standard invention.

But it's much less *ambiguous* than the "perfectly good" use of quotation marks for the same.
posted by Dysk at 8:56 AM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

It always amuses me that Tesco decorates their premium range with a little star, which gets rendered in text as "Tesco Finest* Product".
posted by lucidium at 9:27 AM on November 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

"*For some values of 'Finest'"
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:38 AM on November 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

But it IS consistent with the grammar rule that pronouns, when owning something, do not use an apostrophe.

I find yous argument for consistency unconvincing. But I suspect we will have to accept disagreement.
posted by eotvos at 9:41 AM on November 25, 2016

When I copy-edit for my engineering colleagues, in proposals or whatever, the joke is that I have a pailful of commas next to my desk and just sprinkle them liberally (Oxford or otherwise) into the copy to chop up endless horrible technical run on sentences. When challenged on the legitimacy of my edits I just say "For Christ's sake, let the reader take a breath".
posted by hearthpig at 9:43 AM on November 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Teachers' Manual vs. Teacher's Manual : it depends on whether you're mostly thinking about the physical instantiation of the books, or the abstract body of guidelines those books embody. The guidelines apply to multiple teachers; each printed book is given to one teacher.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:54 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have an as-yet untested theory that the (descriptive) rule for when to place a comma before an "s" is if the word ends in a vowel sound. Hence "CD's" but "disks" (*disk's). Particularly if it would make the word sound funny (typo's, because it's pronounced "type Os" like a goth band not "type oss" like a Greek island).

A quick bit of grepping through US English tweets yields:

"hears":152

"hear's": 1 (looks like it means "hearing")

"sees": 669

"see's":22 (probably not all talking about Vatican property)
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 11:22 AM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

The guidelines apply to multiple teachers; each printed book is given to one teacher.

Oh, so each of the teachers' manuals is a teacher's manual?
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 PM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

To some in my circle,
'"Bob Johnson" is pitching for the Red Sox tonight!'
means
'The Red Sox are starting a pitcher today named Bob Johnson, and he is of such obscurity that even one such as myself who follows baseball very closely has never heard of him, and therefore wagering against the Red Sox or using fantasy baseball players against the Red Sox would be a good idea. Also, what a joyous occasion to discover a new baseball player of minor relevance, Bob Johnson, for ones such as us who follow baseball so closely! Let us celebrate!'
posted by Kwine at 12:13 PM on November 25, 2016

I'm just freaking out that there's even baseball happening this late in November!
posted by hippybear at 12:40 PM on November 25, 2016

The best thing about commas is that after you've set down what you want to say on paper, you can hire someone else to put in all the commas and shit where they belong if you're not positive yourself.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:00 PM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

"put in all the commas, and shit where they belong"
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:41 PM on November 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

This has nothing to do with punctuation, but on the subject of proper grammar, why is it so common for people to use "women" as a singular noun? I see this on mefi all the time.
posted by AFABulous at 2:13 PM on November 25, 2016

In a post-truth world, the Oxford Comma is more important than ever. @IAmOxfordComma
posted by porpoise at 2:44 PM on November 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

I worked with a co-worker who considered commas to be clutter.

Did you ever meet her uncle Jack?
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:40 PM on November 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

ok can one of you with better search skills than mine find a mid-1980s Harper's article by Thomas Middleton on gratuitous quotation marks? He covered it so much better without any art supporting his thesis, and, being a journalist, tracked down various sign makers and asked them what was with the particular punctuation? The answer invariably was that they thought the quotes added emphasis. And people wonder how Trump got elected.
posted by morspin at 10:31 PM on November 25, 2016

No. 17 in the commas list was the book title Come On People, subtitled On the Path from Victims to Victors, written by Bill Cosby & Alvin F Pouissant. Punctuation and all other things aside, a certain 'How dare he!' functional eponystery is being committed there in that title by one of the authors.
posted by y2karl at 1:31 PM on November 26, 2016

Wild_Eep: The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

"Escape Rope"
"Emergency Use"
"Only"

("Why" "Dear ghods" "why?")
[Answer: "that's what you wrote on the sign making order form"]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:43 PM on November 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Talking about a book, one could be referring to the content, which is shared among the readers of the book, or the physical artifact. "All the teachers had a copy of the same teachers' manual." vs. "She kept her teacher's manual in the drawer."
posted by sanedragon at 8:30 AM on November 27, 2016

My daughter shared this joke with me tonight, which seemed appropriate.

Q. What's the difference between a cat and a complex sentence?

A. A cat has claws at the end of its paws, and a complex sentence has a pause at the end of its clause.
posted by SpacemanStix at 11:07 PM on November 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Teachers Manual" is the principal's principal instruction book for managing the group of teachers.
posted by NumberSix at 6:48 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

A missing comma is responsible for the dirtiest #1 song in history.


that is the fedex arrow of punctuation ambiguities
posted by Sebmojo at 2:22 AM on December 4, 2016