Apostrophe etiquette

If you've been reading my blog religiously (and, really, who wouldn't), you know that I have a pet peeve about punctuation and grammar. I am, by no means, an expert. But, seriously, things have gotten very out of hand in this world.

Yesterday, my friend Denise devoted her column in the Wichitalk section of our newspaper (the one she and I both work for) to the blogs of some others who post pictures of apostrophe horrors among other things. See, it's not just me!

Check a couple of them out for yourselves:
http://apostrophism.com
http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

'80s Music Revisited

Saturday evening I attended a show at Cabaret Oldtown. I usually love their shows. They're hip, they're fun and the last one I saw there (Menopausapalooza) was a real winner. The current show is a celebration of '80s music and while it did get my toe tapping, it wasn't my favorite show they've ever done. To the left is a picture of the program cover.

Now, I don't mean to be all anal, but really, the apostrophe? Why do people do that? It's not possessive, it's plural! And they spelled gnarly with an 'e': gnarley. I know it's slang and I shouldn't have that grammar stick shoved so far up my backside, but this is a professional theater doing a professional show. Welcome to a huge pet peeve of mine.

I even pulled out the dictionary thinking I might be mistaken about gnarley. And I can admit when I'm wrong. Most of the time. Although the Webster's definition of gnarly is and I quote "gnarled", there is no entry for gnarley. I even went to wikipedia and searched for the slang there. No entry for either gnarly or gnarley. Nothing! I guess they couldn't have used the Pac-Mac icon as an 'e' unless they thew an extra letter in somewhere. Maybe that was their justification? So, weigh in with me here fellow bloggers. What's your take on it?

Here's our Totally Gnarly '80s group:

Laurie, Joyce and me -- all of us graduated from Newman back when it was still Kansas Newman College. Photo credit to a tall guy named Big Al that Joyce knows. We still had fun despite the bad program cover!