Two by two? Not even one apostrophe, evidently

The second in my occasional (and highly cathartic) series of instances of GBH against the English language also comes from Derby - in fact, it's almost next-door to poor apostrophe-less Harry from the previous post. This time the culprit is a pub. Tom, my partner in crime and life as well as the unlucky witness of most of my punctuation-related outbursts, spotted and photographed this one.

When I was a child at infant school we used to sing a song which went "Who built the ark? Noah, Noah! Who built the ark? Brother Noah built the ark!"

Well, he may have built it, but apparently he doesn't own it. It should read Noah's Ark - no possessive apostrophe in sight. Maybe it got washed away in the flood.

Bad luck, Noah.

Harry aPostrophe and the Chamber of Amusements

After nearly driving off the road in a rage today when I spotted a heinous rogue apostrophe in a sign outside a BMW garage (BMW! I ask you. You'd think they could afford an editor, wouldn't you?), the idea for this blog was born. I'll be pointing out and posting errors in written English wherever I find them - and believe me, as a professional editor I find them ALL THE TIME. Every unchallenged errant apostrophe or occurrence of 'complimentary' instead of 'complementary' causes a small part of my brain to curl up and die, so I'm going to post them here in an effort to get the ranting out of my system.

There are other websites doing a similar thing, and all power to them, because the more of us there are the better. So I'm not going to let that get in the way of a good idea. By way of a kick-off, here's a photo of an amusement arcade in Derby, UK.

Pity poor Harry. Although he evidently has the highest paying slots in town, he clearly doesn't make enough money to be able to afford a decent proofreader.