The nation is divided over an apostrophe this week. Waterstone’s has dropped theirs to become simply Waterstones. The use of apostrophes on signs has been a touchy subject for many years, spawning many a small hardback book on the issue. They argue that it has no place in the digital age. Should I be dropping punctuation from my blog perhaps? As many tweeps have pointed out, capital letters have no place in URLs either, yet they have restored their W from the w of their last rebrand.
Whilst the Apostrophe Protection Society is up in arms the real issue is that of the poor homeless apostrophes now roaming the streets of our towns and cities.
I saw the apostrophe on my way to work this morning. It’s not looking too well. twitter.com/WstonesOxfordS…
— Waterstones (@WstonesOxfordSt) January 12, 2012
Another controversial subject on the minds of those I follow is the introduction of the new “Girl Lego”. Lego have produced girl minifigs for quite some time, a quick switch of hair and voila, you have a girl. There are even a few heads that feature make-up but all in all, they were fairly androgynous. The new girl figures offend my aesthetic sensibility but I understand where Lego as a company are coming from, they need to make money and that’s where they think they can make it. Plus a few pink bricks in a bucket is no bad thing.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, LEGO?!Are you a girl or are you normal: impeus.com/?p=445
— Pewari Naan (@Pewari) January 11, 2012
However, the people behind Lego’s magazine made a huge faux pas when they decided to switch the magazines sent out to female subscribers. No more ninjas for them! I personally don’t have an issue with the wording of regular and girl editions. Regular means it’s aimed at everyone boys AND girls, and the girl one is aimed at, well, girls (and the brothers that steal their sisters’ toys). I think girls can be girlie if they so wish or they can dress up as ninjas, whatever makes them happy. But I do not think it’s right to switch versions of the magazine based on gender. If they wanted to plug the new girl edition, they could have sent free copies out with the regular edition and given them an option to switch if they preferred it. Instead, if you’re a girl, you get the girl edition unless you inform them otherwise.

With all that conflict going on, I bet you need something cute and fluffy? If I thought I wanted a sloth after reading Zoo City, I definitely want one after watching this (shared by @laurenbeukes):
Whilst I thought the whole world would have already seen The Joy of Books already, it’s only had a million or so hits. If you missed it here it is:
In other news, many avocado sightings were reported on Monday, I found out I could indeed get a print of the Zoo City cover, and 99% of my British timeline were killing time in anticipation of Sherlock on Sunday. What’s your Twitter world like this week?
Related posts
2 Comments
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
Read Next
Subscribe via Email
Recent Posts
If you happen to be reading articles about Kazuo Ishiguro/Klara and the Sun having not read (or watched) Never Let… https://t.co/Sql7aCHQ6V
FollowForgot how hard fishing is at the start of Stardew Valley. At least they've added a training rod so I have some cha… https://t.co/3lOs92nZRm
FollowToday's #bookpost , my pre-order of A History of What Comes Next and a review copy of For the Wolf from @orbitbooks https://t.co/CW9NjJZTbT
Follow[gifted] Surprise #bookpost from @orbitbooks_uk - thanks @gambit589! 🐺🐺🐺 #bookpost #bookpost #bookpost … https://t.co/eUUi813dxG
FollowCurrently Reading
Black Sun
Today he would become a god. His mother had told him so. The opening line may seem like something any mother would tell her son, but in the case of Serapio, his mother truly believes he will become the Crow God reborn. She blinds him,…
Legendborn
The day Bree gets accepted into an early college placement at UNC, is the day her mother dies. The last words they spoke were of anger. Unable to deal with her dad’s grief on top of her own, Bree goes ahead with the placement. Once…
Ninth House
Alex Stern does not belong at Yale. When she awakes as the sole survivor of a multiple homicide, presumed a drug deal gone wrong, she is given an unlikely offer. Come to Yale, join the House of Lethe and oversee the rituals of the other…
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Just let me dust off this blog thing, I have a review for you! One of my anticipated reads released during lockdown was the follow-up to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. If you read that, of course will will be dying to know what happened to…
I really hope people who are that concerned about apostrophes never find out what us programmers do to punctuation!
I hadn't seen Love of Books before, how delightful!