Sunday 23 August 2015

beautys for sale

I did a double-take when I saw this sign outside a florist shop:


I thought they couldn't spell the plural form of beauty. When I walked on, and saw the other side of the sign, I smiled. It seemed the writer had hedged her bets. This time she'd added an apostrophe.



We had a discussion around the kitchen table that afternoon - as you do. I thought the plural of the trade name, Winter Beauty could be legitimately spelled as 'Beautys'. (BTW, my spell checker doesn't agree with me, but I've overruled it.) But the rest of the family disagreed.


Maybe if she'd spelled it with a capital letter - Beautys - I could have convinced my family. On the other hand, the label didn't use capitals.

And she spelled hellebore wrong, anyway.

4 comments:

proud womon said...

i have to agree with you parlance... the plural of winter beauty surely has to be winter beautys, no apostrophe!!! guess it depends on when and where you went to school...

Mary said...

AND there shouldn't have been an apostrophe at all!

parlance said...

Mary, I agree at least on that point.

parlance said...

proud womon, we're all agreed on the apostrophe, that's for sure. Maybe it also depends on how long ago you went to school...