06.17.08
Stop It! Plea’se!
From a press release I received recently:
I wanted to give you a head’s up that . . .
Well, we needn’t worry about what the press release was touting. We must instead fuss about apostrophes whilst I don my persnickitor hat.
The apostrophe in “head’s up” has, of course, wandered in from the great catapostrophic* void. As the phrase is presented here, the press-release author is giving me an up that apparently belongs to a head.
“Heads up!,” as all of us except the press-release writer already know, is a warning call, akin to shouting “Fore!” when teeing off. We used the call quite a bit in my thankfully brief days in the theatre. While building sets or mounting lights, the occasional clumsy technician (whose days in the theatre would be thankfully brief) might drop something or knock something over, potentially onto someone’s head. Heads up! Or, more succinctly, Heads! And not Head’s! It’s very difficult to shout an apostrophe.
Do catapostrophes make you cringe happily, the way people go to horror movies or take ride roller coasters to scream in fear and have fun? Check out the Apostrophe Abuse blog. My favorite abuse recorded there? “Bake’t muffin.” That should make my head spin. Instead, it make’s my head’s pin.
And for more happy cringing, I point to a sample entry from Everything You Know About English Is Wrong: “Plural’s: You do not use an apostrophe when forming plurals.”
* Neologism alert: Catapostrophic—related to an apostrophe catastrophe. End Neologism Alert.
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