Charles Apple

…Because it’ll only drive you crazy.

Have you seen the Baltimore Orioles logo? Look closely at the apostrophe:

Yep. It’s upside-down. And these are the official league-issued logos!

What’s worse: This problem has spread to the team’s uniforms:

The always-interesting Uni Watch blogger — Paul Lukas of ESPN — went off on a huge rant back in February about what he feels is an increasing trend in poor punctuation in sports design:

The apostrophe catastrophe, as I like to call it, is rooted in word-processing and desktop-publishing programs, most of which use “smart quotes” (i.e., they automatically assume that if there’s a space immediately prior to the quote/apostrophe key being hit, that means you want an open-quote). It’s easy enough to override this default mode — with Macs, you type option-shift-] to get a real apostrophe, regardless of what precedes it; not sure how to do it in Windows — but most people don’t do this. I used to think it was because they were lazy, but now I think it’s because the incorrect imposition of smart quotes has led people to mistakenly think that the backwards open-quote is actually correct. So now the disease is spreading to non-digital writing as well.

Paul cited a number of examples:

We feel Paul’s pain. From time to time, these errant marks turn up here in the blog, too. The new version of Wordpress has a tendency to substitute bad apostrophes in place of our deliberately androgynous straight punctuation, especially in our headlines. The old version of Wordpress wasn’t nearly as presumptuous.

The very next day, though, Paul discovered the Orioles’ upside-down apostrophe:

I realize an argument can be made that there shouldn’t be an apostrophe there at all, because plurals don’t take apostrophes. But you could also argue that the apostrophe is standing in for “riole,” plus “O’s” is less visually awkward than “Os” would be, plus-plus there’s a strong precedent for using an apostrophe in this type of logo. So let’s assume that the apostrophe belongs there.

But once you’ve decided it belongs there, how can anyone who got past the third grade orient it incorrectly?

This small but telling example of illiteracy (and make no mistake, that’s exactly what it is) extends to Baltimore’s alternate cap, BP cap, “portion of the proceeds” cap, and other gear. It’s been part of the team’s official graphics program since 2005, and I’m embarrassed not to have noticed it until now.

Naturally, we wondered how the folks at the Baltimore Sun were dealing with this. Does the Sun use this logo as supplied by the rocket scientists of the MLB? Or will they have an artist go into the EPS file and make the correction?

We contacted everyone in our contact list at the Sun, hoping for comment. We never heard back. However, we did find this blog promo on the Sun’s web site late last week — which gives us an answer, we presume:

We did hear from one Sun staffer — engaging metro columnist Laura Vozzella, who’s written the occasional piece lamenting the decline of the language. Laura tells us:

We seem to be an oddly apostrophe-challenged state. I’ve written about the fact that former Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s Christmas card wished everyone Merry Christmas from “The Ehrlich’s” and that his revamped Web site states that “The Ehrlich’s” have two sons.

She said she may revisit the wonderful world of errant punctuation in an upcoming column. If she does, you can find it here.

Find the Uni Watch blog here.

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UPDATE:

A comment below by Tom Lynch reminds me: The bird is back in Baltimore.

The bird, as drawn in 1966 by the Sun’s Jim Hartzell.
—

Editor & Publisher reported last week — and the Sun itself reported today — that a cartoon Oriole that commented on the previous day’s game will return starting Tuesday.

Sun artist Jim Hartzell began drawing the daily bird cartoon in 1967, but when Hartzell retired in 1979, the bird flew the coop with him. Other artists picked up the chore but the feature was retired for good in 1992.

Hartzell also designed the team’s first official logo, used from 1954 to 1964:

The new daily cartoon bird will be drawn by longtime Sun artist Mike Ricigliano.

Read the Sun’s story here. Find a history of Oriole logos and mascots here.

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UPDATE #2

John McIntyre, director of the copy desk at the Baltimore Sun, responds by slamming visual journalists:

Here’s a suggestion to help you stay sane. It’s just a logo. Logos are made by graphic artists, who tend to be more concerned with visual impact than the niceties of all that word stuff. If you can tolerate that idiotic backward R in the Toys “R” Us sign, than an incorrect version of the apostrophe shouldn’t keep you up nights.

…I’ve got my hands full trying to clean up the prose — we published a reference this morning to mantle clocks, for Fowler’s sake. I don’t have the time, the inclination or the writ to attempt to clean up logos, even assuming that I could get someone to listen to me.

Mr. Apple and Mr. Lukas, good luck in your crusade. But my advice: Get a grip.

Sigh. Would someone out there well-versed in the ways of copy-editing please explain to me the validity of having one’s head stuck up one’s arse?

And who said I’m on a crusade? Paul Lukas is on a crusade; I was just looking for a bright for my blog.

Oh, and John? It should be “then,” not “than.” But I don’t have the time, the inclination or the writ to attempt to clean up your use of the language, even assuming I could get someone to listen to me.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 11:24 am and is filed under Amusing stuff, Graphics, Web news design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.