I am a pedant

Again, this is not exactly news. Not only is this not news to anyone who knows me I think that it's pretty obvious from what I've written up to now that I am a difficult so-and-so (fuck yeah keeping it clean... wait... shit, never mind, dammit).

Anyhoo

The point being that a lot of things irritate me. And what better to do with one's irritations than get a grip and move on like a grown-up write about them on these here intertubes? Exactly. One of the things that irritates me is incorrect usage of apostrophes. This is not specific to me of course, indeed there are probably sites dedicated to very little else, but this example is particularly bad. It is particularly bad because it mixes up with another bugbear of mine which is incorrect pluralisation.

"But isn't all incorrect usage of apostrophes to do with incorrect pluralisation?" Some of you might wonder. Oh you dear thing, this is a whole other level of getting it wrong; here, I'll show you:

I apologise for the poor quality of image but we only had a 'phone camera and the light wasn't very good. It does, however, communicate the horror that is there.

You see that? "Panini's". Terrifying is it not?

Now this takes in a bit of Italian. A panino is an Italian bread roll. This is pluralised to panini. So I might have a panino, you might have a panino, so we would have panini. So even on a basic level of trying to add an "s" to this the entry on this pub's menu is woefully incorrect. But then they add an apostrophe? It's like they don't even care. About anything. How can you trust someone who treats language like that? It makes me sick. Sure this might seem like the kind of thing that could just be ignored but what then? Am I to turn a blind eye to violence? To warfare? No, standards much be maintained or we're just bloody savages.

The other thing that the pub in question (actually a rather good pub in general, very nice beers and cider, so I don't want to name it) does with its (oh you thought I might trip up there did you? Oh no, not me, no siree) menu is something that has been bugging my partner for years. I'd never really noticed before she pointed it out to me but now it really pisses me off. Which is good because I clearly needed more things that piss me off.

Yeah, that.

Again, I apologise for the poor picture quality ('phone camera, bad light, yadda yadda yadda) but again I am certain that you can see why this would make someone's blood boil. That's right: Suggesting that a Caesar Salad is vegetarian. Now, the salad in question may well be vegetarian, but then it would hardly be a "classic" example now would it? Not unless anchovies have been reclassified recently and I just haven't realised.

Now this one is a bit more serious than the former example as it impacts on people. I myself am not vegetarian but that does not mean that I approve of telling people that something that contains fish is vegetarian. This mistake is really rather unfair on people.

Pedantry isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes details are important.

Bet you didn't expect a serious and valid point at the end of all this did you? I must admit that I didn't see it coming either. Go figure.