I really am silently correcting your grammar

and sometimes I can no longer be silent about it

Back in the two-thousand-teens new-ish days of blogging when blogspot was all the rage, I—being the word-nerd that I am—found and immediately followed The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. It consisted of photos people submitted that featured (you guessed it) unnecessary quotation marks.

When you use quotation marks around a word, unless it is a direct quote, it indicates that the word does not mean what it normally means. Gifts are not the same as “gifts,” of which you should be suspect.

Does this sound silly to you? Me too, until you begin to realize just how many unnecessary quotation marks are to be found in the wild. You’ve seen them, I’m sure.

I see them too, along with all the other spelling and grammatical mistakes that become public domain. You know that T-shirt that says “I’m silently correcting your grammar”? I am, but not in a mean-spirited way. It’s not something I can turn off. It just happens, before my brain even has a say in the matter. I hear it. I see it. I feel the errors in my very soul.

Probably the most egregious are the ones that show up in the song lyrics on the screen in church Sunday morning. They suck the life right out of me. Last week we sang about God’s fiathfulness.

I once read a book called The Great Typo Hunt, which was the fascinating story of two young men, self-titled “grammar vigilantes,” who, armed with Sharpies and Wite-Out, traveled the entire United States searching for misspellings and correcting them. They were actually charged with defacing federal property when they corrected a few typos on a permanent sign at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. They were fined $3000 and banned from National Parks for one year. The court case resulted in their book deal.

What fun, though! Seeing the country and fixing errors along the way? I wish I’d thought of it first.

But years ago I met the wonderful Bill Walsh, copy editor at The Washington Post, who taught me that you can “be a language snob without being a jerk,”¹ and I have attempted to do both.

But sometimes I see a sign and I just have to be a little bit jerk-ish. Here are a few recent ones (thanks to my children for some of these):

For the love, please do not use an apostrophe to make a plural. Also, you will never find this pillow in my house. I would have a nervous breakdown.

You must be dressed as something you are not to use the restroom. They’re probably busy on Halloween.

In this person’s defense, inconvenience is hard to spell.

Say it with me: Wed-nes-day. But also, why the dash in “open on”?

Something like an exit, but not really.

We’ve covered this before: apostrophes do not make plurals.

This is not hand written. Someone had to intentionally manufacture this sign.

Seen on a pair of pajamas at JC Penney. Why? Kids, think before you insert an apostrophe.

And finally,

Did no one notice this? Again, it was typed, enlarged, printed, and hung, all without anyone being bothered that they are selling scrafs.

And before I go, a public service announcement for the upcoming Christmas card season: Never use an apostrophe to make your last name plural.

If your name is Smith and there are two or more people living in your home with the same surname, it’s Smiths. Just add an s. If you write Smith’s, we will all wonder what belongs to you. Smith’s house? Smith’s greetings? Just don’t.

If you are one of the lucky ones whose name ends with -s or -z or -x or -sh (etc.), you will have to add -es to make it plural.

One Fox, two Foxes.
One Harris, five Harrises.
One Rush, many Rushes.

If you are unsure, ask the Google to help, but never under any circumstances use an apostrophe to make your family name plural. It is never okay.

1. Bill Walsh, Yes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob without Being a Jerk. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013.