[ Editor’s Note: OK,

There are a number of apostrophe obsessives out there who know their grammar and its usage although I generally ignore these errors but today I started to worry. Our local shopping center has a new medical clinic which kindly stated “Walk in’s welcome” on a large banner. I am not really a pedant, but I am reluctant to see a doctor who doesn’t know the English language even though it’s only their medical expertise that I am interested in. The real worry is the gradual decline in the standards that we expect in language and unfortunately in many other areas.

Let’s try to get the small things right and then work on the world’s real problems.

so as editor of this newspaper, my job is to, you know, edit the materials that are presented to me for publication. I definitely don’t catch all the grammar errors, and I probably commit more of them myself than I’d like to admit, but I get where you’re coming from. Now part of it comes simply from our language being a little confusing. I mean, you can read the sentence, “ Eye sea ewe their bye the knew blew house” and know exactly what it means even though only two of those words are being used correctly. So it’s super annoying when someone says “ your welcome” or “ its over their” or whatever, but I just make the necessary corrections and move on with my life.

For the record, I think we will all be reading and writing in internet slang ( lol, btw, fwiw) and emojis in 50 years anyway. Well, someone will. I’d be 98 by then, assuming I make it that long. As far as newspaper editing goes, my personal pet peeve is when people hold an event and refer to it as the “ First Annual” so- and- so. One, because nothing can be “ annual” the first time it happens, and two, there have been so many “ first annual…” things that never made it to the “ second annual” so, maybe they were being a little presumptuous on their event’s success. In case you care at all, the corred phrasing for such things is “ inaugural”]