My Grammar Good

FAQ

MyGrammarGood.com is a site I created to show the world how appalling spelling and grammar is around us. I ask viewers of this site to send me pictures to help me expand it.

These signs and notices are usually made by professional sign writers - don't they notice anything is wrong?

Taken from Wikipedia
Greengrocers' apostrophes

Apostrophes used incorrectly to form plurals are known as greengrocers' apostrophes (also: greengrocer's apostrophes, grocers' apostrophes or grocer's apostrophes, sometimes humorously greengrocers apostrophe's). It is believed that the term was first coined in the middle of the twentieth century by a teacher of languages working in Liverpool in the United Kingdom, at a time when such mistakes were common in the handwritten signs and advertisements of greengrocers, e.g., “Apple's 1'- a pound, orange's 1'6d a pound.” In recent years, however, this misuse has become increasingly frequent in other forms of advertisement, particularly those of small businesses, e.g., from Hackney Market in London, UK “Christma's Card's.” It is also not uncommon on the signage displayed by supermarkets, e.g., from Tesco, "CD's" and "DVD's." (Some are also guilty of omitting the mark where it should be included, as in "childrens books".) The practice comes from a widespread ignorance of the use of the apostrophe or of English grammar in general and the identical sound of the plural and possessive forms of most nouns. The reasons for the growth of the phenomenon are unknown. Some have argued that its use in mass communication by poorly educated employees of large companies has led to the less grammatically able accepting it as correct and adopting the habit themselves. This greengrocers' apostrophe is discussed in Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. It has been parodied by Terry Pratchett in his novel Going Postal, in which a greengrocer goes 'so far a's to u'se greengrocer's apo'strophe's in 'speech.

That's easy for you and very helpful for me. This site is all about user submissions. To contribute a picture, click here to go to the 'send me a picture' form and fill in the details. You can also send me pictures you've taken on your camera phone to via MMS.

You have a few choices:
1. You can take a picture on a digital camera then send it to me.
2. You can take a picture on your camera phone then send it to me via MMS
3. You can take a picture on a 35mm camera, have the film developed, scan in the picture then send it to me. As long as you have the picture as a .jpg, .jpg, .gif or .png I'll be able to use it.

I am aware that camera phones are getting very good at taking pictures, but for this site they don't need to be any bigger than 1mp in size. If they are this size they should be fine to MMS to me at . If you choose to sent them to me via MMS, please include where the picture was taken and your name.

This is probably because a sign you have is either spelt incorrectly or the grammar makes people want to cringe. This site isn't meant to cause offence, if anything it can be seen as pointing out a mistake that needs rectifying. I'm just trying to raise the standard a little.

Brilliant. I'm looking at ways to expand and make the site better. You can send me comments / questions to me via this page. You can always email .

I may have made some mistakes on this site and if you find any please alert me to them.