From a sign in a shop:
"Bra's and Panties"
I can never understand how someone can write a sign like this. One part is correct while the other is wrong. Does the person make a mistake and then realize it's a mistake so the next part is right, but then forgets to correct the first part? Or is the person just not thinking? Can anyone enlighten me?
P.S. No apostrophe needed!
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3 comments:
Ah, you'd see a lot of that in the Philippines. Where something is supposed to have an apostrophe, they don't put one, and vice versa. It's as ubiquitous as "there" being confused with "their," and "wear" being confused with "where" and "were."
People who regularly (and mistakenly, of course) use an apostrophe to make a word plural typically only use the apostrophe when the word doesn't take an "-es" to make it plural. So it makes sense that "bra's" would have an apostrophe but "panties" would not. I suspect this happens much of the time because the writer fears that the word looks incorrect without an apostrophe (for example, that "bras" might be pronounced like "brass" and misunderstood, or that "bras" might appear to be a misspelling of "brass").
I see it all the time, compounded by the fact that usually they've put quotation marks around it.
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