Before Christmas, I posted about the frightening use of apostrophes on MarloDee Designs’ website. A few days ago we received notification of the following comment.

Hello! This is Marlo from MarloDee Designs. I think I have fixed all the punctuation errors on my website. Wow! I didn’t mean to blind Heather. I did have a couple of people send me email’s pointing out my faults(although the one sent to me was quite mean). But, maybe I deserved it. (oh by the way, I am in the process of redesigning two pages. So, if you visit again you will find that two of my pages will still have punctuation errors. I am sorry. I will have them corrected soon.) I didn’t mean to offend anyone.

Does anyone else find this response disarmingly charming? The fact that in this comment Marlo makes the very same mistake for which she was lambasted just adds to the charm, in my opinion. (Marlo dear, simple plurals don’t need an apostrophe so “email’s” is incorrect.)

A brief glance at Marlo’s website confirms that she has corrected many (although not all) of the errors, so we can take her off The List.

Marlo, thank you for your delightful comment, I am pleased you are trying to change your apostrophe abusing ways. As they say, the first step is admitting you have a problem and asking for help. I apologise for the over-exuberance of some of our readers but to stretch that A.A. analogy, think of their rudeness as an intervention.

Finally, to the over-zealous grammar vigilante who sent Marlo a nasty email: you should be ashamed of yourself. I know in the past I’ve alluded to firebombing and lynch-mobs but such endorsements are in jest… usually. A polite email would have been much more appropriate. Although having said that, these guys might benefit from a little letter bomb or two. Where’s my bag of nails?

Related post: ‘Tis the season to make new enemies