{"id":4396,"date":"2013-11-03T11:29:36","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T11:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/?p=4396"},"modified":"2013-11-03T13:01:34","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T13:01:34","slug":"the-same-procedure-as-last-year-grandwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/2013\/11\/the-same-procedure-as-last-year-grandwest\/","title":{"rendered":"The same procedure as last year GrandWest?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear GrandWest Casino <\/p>\n

Though we’ve had our issues<\/a> in the past, I was confident that we had emerged from our journey together with a mutual respect for the English language.<\/p>\n

I had moved on with my life, safe in the knowledge that your apostrophes had been reigned in for good. I even smiled with a knowing satisfaction when the rest of the world noticed<\/a> our little t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate, thinking fondly of our time together as a bygone era of innocence, where good grammar had triumphed over mischievous apostrophes once and for all.<\/p>\n

You’ll understand then why I almost catapulted my car through the railings on the side of the freeway one morning this week, as I entered a suspended state of disbelief after spotting one of your latest billboards. I present to you Exhibit A:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even as I write this, I need to inhale deeply to summon up the strength to explain why this somewhat amusing headline has unfortunately been sabotaged by poor grammar. <\/p>\n

The problem here is with the word “grannies”. In its current form, it is simply the plural of the word ‘granny’ and therefore makes no sense in the context of the headline. Without the correct form of the word (being singular), and without an apostrophe to indicate possession, this sentence makes as much sense as “Tea at carrots.” Here’s why:<\/p>\n

To start with, there is an implied part of the sentence that does not appear on the billboard – not that it needs to. The full form of the sentence (had ellipsis<\/a> not been used here) would be: “Tea at granny’s place”. Of course ‘place’ could be ‘home’ or ‘house’ or any other location owned by ‘granny’. <\/p>\n

Ellipsis is commonplace in such an instance (another example would be “We’re all going over to Bob’s for a drink”), and there’s nothing wrong with leaving out the word ‘place’. However, you still need to retain the possessive form of ‘granny’ to maintain the grammatical accuracy of the sentence.<\/p>\n

If you intended to communicate that there was more than one granny’s place at which tea was taking place (which would make no sense, given the use of this sentence in English to indicate teatime spent at YOUR granny’s place) then the word ‘grannies’ should have an apostrophe after the word to indicate possession of all of their places, or of a shared place owned by them all.<\/p>\n

I would like to suggest that you move forward with disciplinary proceedings against your errant apostrophes as soon as possible, and demand that they perform their contractual obligations without delay.<\/p>\n

Please keep me appraised of the situation as it progresses.<\/p>\n

Until next time
\nJason<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear GrandWest Casino Though we’ve had our issues in the past, I was confident that we had emerged from our journey together with a mutual respect for the English language. I had moved on with my life, safe in the knowledge that your apostrophes had been reigned in for good. I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4396"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4403,"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions\/4403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonelk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}