COMMENT
The signs are there for all to see: butchers are smarter than greengrocers.
I'm not talking profits, or protein versus vitamins, or even positions on the food chain (though biological science does come into it): it's simply the accepted proof of intelligence in an organism that it shows that it can learn.
And butchers have learned, while greengrocers are still wallowing in ignorance.
What are these signs, you ask? Actual signs, of course: in their windows and on the pavements outside their shops.
Back in the 70s, when it was a new and unusual cut of meat that only the travelled and adventurous (garlic-eaters) would dare to buy, there were more ways of spelling Wiener schnitzel than you could shake a cleaver at.
Shakespeare himself was not more inventive in writing his name than butchers were with their white-painted manglings of these words.
It was a thorn in the side of pedants, who might have been driven to escape this threat to their peace of mind by embracing vegetarianism, if worse horrors were not rampant in the greengrocer next door.
But bless them, the butchers eventually saw their error and fixed it. It has been a long time since I've seen schnitzel misspelled, and I can now gaze into their windows, confident that even the most exotic Dutch sausage is orthographically correct. Some things do change for the better - and it's taken just 30 years.
If only the same could be said for those who sell advocadoes, potatos and tomatos, Breaburn apples and kumera. These veggie types could clearly do with a concentrated boost of iron to enable their feeble brains to cope with the dual challenges of spelling rhubarb and onions, and not panicking when faced with a shopful of plural crops ending in a vowel.
Just what is so scary about simply adding an s to banana? Why do these people insert an apostrophe where it was never meant to go? Do they not realise how dumb they look to us - the super-intelligentsia who have grasped the abstruse concept that the apostrophe performs only two functions, and neither is to make a plural?
Of course, I'm being unfair here. Greengrocers are not alone in the apostrophe abuse that is a national scandal and a source of irritation, shame and embarrassment to people who like to see things done properly.
I understand that sign-writers and advertisers value visual expression and conceptual inspiration more highly than grammar and spelling, but need they be mutually exclusive?
Would it compromise their artistic ideals to consult a dictionary?
Might not their idea and its impact be enhanced if it did not contain a glaring spelling or punctuation error?
Like its instead of it's, or vice versa. These two little words are not interchangeable, despite what you see on television, ads on buses and billboards. The first is possessive, the second an abbreviation. If you can learn to text-message or understand the offside rule, then you can get a handle on that, surely.
It's so easy to get right: so why do you all keep getting it so wrong?
* Pamela Wade is a Herald reader.
* Is there something you want to get off your chest? We'll give you 600 words to make your point. It should be witty and stylish, not crude or abusive.
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