English Language - what "Does your head in" ??

[Oldjohnw]

Choir boy: Bu-a
Choir master: you mean butter.
Choir boy: butter
Choir master: ah, that's be-a.

[Mike Sales]

When I was a pearl diver (what Orwell called a plongeur) in a Highland hotel the other Scots would ask the two wee chambermaids frae Shettleston to say,
"Hoo' wah'ah boo'ul."

[Mick F]

Do we have an Apostrophe thread?

The mini mart up the road in Drakewalls was run by the Pearce family for more years than we can remember.
It's now run and been modernised by the Co-op.

On the main frontage it says correctly, "Welcome to Drakewalls' Co-op" ie the Co-op in Drakewalls.
The rear though, says, "Customer Car Park".
Consistency would be good eh?

They are happy (and correct) to use the possessive for the name of the shop, but only expect one single customer.

[Jdsk]

What's wrong with Customer Car Park? Used that way it's a descriptive rather than a possessive form: Staff Car Park, Front Car Park, Long-stay Car Park.

One of the many joys of English is the ability to use nouns to modify other nouns, and here it's very neatly doubled: Car is also a noun.

And it's pretty nifty to be able to use adjectives as nouns as well.

Jonathan

PS: Use of the possessive in Drakewalls' Co-op is delightfully friendly.

[thirdcrank]

The possessive theme is perhaps part of a national revamp. Here's Drighlington's Co-op. Said to be the oldest purpose-built Co-op in England still in use as a Co-op, but much reduced in range.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.75639 ... 384!8i8192

[Bmblbzzz]

The possessive theme is perhaps part of a national revamp. Here's Drighlington's Co-op. Said to be the oldest purpose-built Co-op in England still in use as a Co-op, but much reduced in range.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.75639 ... 384!8i8192

Wonderful building!

[Jdsk]

The possessive theme is perhaps part of a national revamp.

I can find the digital "design system" and the guidance on logos, but not a style sheet. I love style sheets.

https://coop-design-system.herokuapp.com//
https://assets.membership.coop.co.uk/causes-mgmt/toolkit/logo-guidelines.pdf

Jonathan

[thirdcrank]

Drighlington is still only a quite small place, but the former local importance of the Drighlington Industrial Co-operative Society is illustrated by there once having been a branch just a mile or so down the road.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.76276 ... 384!8i8192

I fear the revamping department may eventually be all that survives.

[simonineaston]

My local Morrisons was presumably only given one apostrophe to play with, 'cos they didn't use it for the name, where it would have been (correctly) Morrison's, the company belonging to one Wm Morrison of Bradford according to Wikipedia. Instead, they saved it to use on the sign alerting customers to the shelf location of the popular audio recording medium, a fact I took issue over, with staff on several occasions, in what I hoped was a light-hearted manner. However, on my last visit, I saw the day manager take off in the direction of the store room when he spotted me coming so I concluded that enough was enough and I should let matters lie...

[Bmblbzzz]

If you're referring to "CD's" there is a school of grammatical thought that the apostrophe is correct, denoting missing letters rather than a possessive. It's not an approach I share or like but it has a certain validity. Similarly when using initialised verbs (or should that be verbed initials?), such as "I sent an email to John, cc'ing Kate and Jim" the alternative "ccing" does look odd. It would be better of course to use a different construction, such as "with Kate and Jim in copy" but there's still the problem of reproducing speech, eg for film captions. How do you write the word that is pronounced "see-see-ing"?

[Chris Jeggo]

If you're referring to "CD's" .....

"GP's" could be quite confusing.

[Oldjohnw]

Surely where there are abbreviations, as distinct from missing letters, there should be stops. So not CD’s but C.Ds. Or is that C.D.s?

[Jdsk]

Are you implying that there's a rule?

; - )

Shirley

[simonineaston]

Rules so misunderstood that folks have written whole books on the subject - I blame the primary school teachers !
We should agree that there's a well-established rule that says an apostrophe can be used to indicate missing characters, but in the case of CD and other abbreviations, there are no missing letters, because abbreviations are counted as words in their own right. I can see how folks might think that an abbrevation is the very epitome of a case of missing letters but that's English for you - ram-jam full of exceptions and special rules!
Other examples of abbreviations might be Ctrl for Control and Dr for Doctor. In these cases, most folk are happy to accept that they are not written: C'tr'l or D'r. Examples of where an apostrophe might be used with an abbreviated word are: 'cos for because, or 'fridge for refrigerator or 'bike for motor-bike but these are starting to disappear. EDIT - and I'll throw in '60s too, just for mischief's sake!
Next, we can talk about acronyms...

[thirdcrank]

Next, we can talk about acronyms...

Only to the extent that they do your head in.