Normally, I would not bother with online apostrophe errors. Most web pages with such errors are written either by people for whom English is a second language, or by amateurs with nothing worth reading in the first place.

In this instance, however, the page in question is sniping at the anal-retentive web masters, who write nothing more than a pile of drivel that they expect other people to take an interest in. Since I am probably a contributor to that melting pot and since the author of the article is undoubtedly another, it seems only fair to ease up on my personal embargo on apostrophe errors on web pages.

The offending error is found in the devil shat seventy newsletter:

Welcome back to the world of *those* pages. Hang your head in shame - the more press Blogger get's, the more idiocy...[sic]

Apart from the hideous colour scheme on his page (grey text on a black background: these amateurs, they should just use web-logging software to design their pages, rather than publish something that hard to read), the error is in the word get's. Get's means "belonging to get", which is probably not the intended meaning (in fact, I cannot think of any way that it is meaningful).

Let's hope that the author gets a life, and a dictionary.

It's conceivable that the editor will change his page, should he ever read this one. Please let me know if this happens

15 January 2001
Ashley Frieze