Monday, February 15, 2010

How I got this way

I was searching the Web for entertaining items for sale cheap (xkcd's idea of a script to buy random stuff is cute but I bet you'd just get boring things most of the time) when I came across the juiciest, raciest, funniest, most outrageous gadget I ever saw, which I'll name as soon as I can think what it should be. Alma Werfel's autobiography, perhaps, or a ridiculous automatic gadget that throws naughty items up in the air to land at the feet of unsuspecting passers-by. Anyway, whatever it was, I decided at once that "it must be mine", to quote John Kovalic's Dork Tower comic, which shows that it must actually have been a gamer's item: the D&D Book of Naughtiness, that must be it (and there actually is a book like that, although I forget its actual name.) And I just almost mispelled its: Why is the possessive of it not spelled it's? Frankly, I firmly believe that English could get along just fine without apostrophe's. In fact, it'd be noticeably improved. Join the Coalition to Stamp Out the Apostrophe! It's bad enough in its (ha! check out those its's!) place--the apostrophe, that is--but when it's misused, as it frequently is, either by those who know no better or those who experience an unfortunate lapse of mental acuity, it can drive one nearly to distraction. Evidence is left as an exercise for the Google-fu of the reader. So in summary, naughty apostrophes have destroyed the racy automatic gadgets that throw Alma Werfel's non-existent (as far as I know) autobiography at innocent bystanders. What else could explain it?

Update: check it out, I spelled the plural of apostrophe as apostrophe's, instead of apostrophes! Once again proving that it's impossible to write a post about bad spelling without making a spelling error.

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