The Insider hasn't been giving the Grammarnator a lot to work with recently, but the piece on a local soap maker did seem to have some missing words “A simple hobby has turned into flourishing, full-time business” and “D'eAngelis said most difficult part of the process is making and putting on labels” cry out for “a” before business and “the” before most. More bizarre in the same article is the reference to “a children.” Maybe what has been typed needs another look before printing.
Those errors are not as serious as what happened the previous week, although not in the Insider (kudos to you!). As you all recall, that's when we celebrated that odd holiday created when schools and businesses decided they could no longer afford taking two days off in February to separately honor Washington and Lincoln, and their birthdays were replaced with a day to commemorate all of the nation's chief executives no matter how long they served (a month for the first Harrison, and not much longer for the assassinated Garfield) or what their approval ratings were when they left office. So now we have a Presidents' Day, but not Congress Day or Supreme Court Justices' Day. Whatever happened to the idea of co-equal branches?
Anyway, getting to the Grammarnator's specialty, note the plural possessive above. Although that seems like a no-brainer, on the day itself an AP article in the Monitor about the 1985 government shutdown got it wrong. So did an ad for Toyota of Nashua in the automobile sales supplement. And, most disturbing of all, so did the State of New Hampshire, or at least its Liquor Commission, which sent me an email proclaiming great savings during their President's Day Sale. My fervent wish is that at this time next year everyone proofs their copy and provides unanimity on Presidents' Day.
Speaking of apostrophes, it was so nice to see a reference to a 1795 meeting at Butters' Tavern in “This Week In Concord History.” Let's hope that it inspires the folks downtown to get a new sign made for their shop.
