SD, those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. As a self-described Semantilante, you should know that commas always go inside quote marks, unless you live in the UK in which case you shouldn't be lecturing anyone here on punctuation and grammar. Also, single quotes (which you used three times in your response) are only permissible when they are part of text that is surrounded by double quotes. Just because single quotes are misused all over the Internet doesn't make them correct. Plus, "days" in the phrase "90 days worth" is possessive and should have an apostrophe (90 days' worth).
I normally avoid playing grammar police because everyone makes mistakes, including yours truly, but I felt your error-filled critique warranted a response.
You are hereby admitted into the august body of Semantilantes, pending arrival of a $1000 annual initiation fee. I knew my bait would work.
I never knew of that rule about quotes within quotes, which I do all the time on FR, sort of sensing I was doing something wrong.
Your first job as a Semantilante would, if you accept the mission, is to get a bottle of White-Out and every time you see an unnecessary apostrophe, like in the stall of “banana’s” at the A&P, just “white it out”.
And while I am on the subject, can you or anyone explain to me WHY, WHY! a full 99% of people I hear on the radio AND TV (talking heads and their callers and/or guests), seems not to be able to resist injecting “I mean” into EVERY spoken dialogue?
People will START a sentence with “I mean” even before they’ve said anything else at all, as if what follows needs the clarification of explaining something previously misunderstood, when nothing in fact has even been previously EXPRESSED. This has been going on FOR YEARS,and it looks like it will never die away. I’m beginning to think it has come to substitute for “uhhhhhhh......”.
If you haven’t noticed this, listen to talk radio for an hour and you’ll be stunned at how common this is.
I feel stupid about injecting this into a serious thread, but I’m not gonna waste more time by “whiting it out”.
Regards, SD