Word Up

Yup, I'm talking to you

Far be it from me to get arsy about anything. You should know by now that I'm a seeping heap of serenity and calm. Except when it comes to the misuse of apostrophies, a practice so spleen-explodingly evil that I harbour fantasies of thrashing literary miscreants with a copy of The Oxford Guide to English Useage.
Jesus, not a day goes by when I don't see such reprehensible sights as 'Vegetable's for sale' or  'Terrys Bike Shop' or 'Its time for tea'. For fuck's sake, you have to wonder what the point is of English teachers, when so many people leave school with the glaring inability to stick a punctuation mark in the right place.
Worse, though - much worse - is that signwriters, the very people who use the English language for a living, are just as incapable. What the frig is with that? Imagine if a brickie didn't know how to use a trowel or a nurse was bewildered at the sight of a syringe? You'd me more likely to employ Harold bloody Shipman on your ward than someone so incapable of the basics of the trade.
Yet there are signwriters who rape the English language every day of their lives but, miraculously, stay in business. How can you not know where to use an apostrophe when it is your fucking job to use apostrophies? Eh? Go on, signwriters, explain that one.
And, Ok, Joe Bloggs the butcher may have asked for a sign that reads 'Quality meat's inside!" but surely it is then the signwriter's job to take to one side the purveyor of said produce and point out the error of his ways. Well, you'd frigging think so, wouldn't you? If, as a journalist, I was asked to write sentences backwards I'd make it known that the request was a bag of bollocks. Why signwriters are incapable of doing that is bloody well beyond me. 
Which means that until said profession bucks the fuck up I'll have to keep on correcting their mistakes with a fat red pen. Someone's got to teach them how it's done. Well at least while thrashing people with a copy of the The Oxford Guide to English Useage remains illegal. Shame.