Rebekah writes:
It’s not even a plural/possessive conundrum. I have never seen an apostrophe used as an accent mark…
Clearly it’s just an abbreviation of the world-famous “Crellidame Bruledotante” flavored coffee.
Cre’me Brule’e
Follow Apostrophe Abuse
#1 by arianna on November 13, 2008 - 8:26 pm
I’ve actually seen that done before, but usually only at the end of the word. I can’t decide if I am glad that they even TRIED to accent the word, or if their lame attempt was just not even worth it. I’m totally torn.
#2 by Jerome Colburn on November 14, 2008 - 11:10 pm
This lady, whose name goes back to the 10th-century Norse queen Ásta Guðbrandsdóttir, was already making the apostrophe-for-acute her trademark when she attended my high school 35 years ago and more, and even in the age of ISO-Latin-1 she still is.
#3 by Beebo on November 19, 2008 - 1:59 pm
I do something similar when typing emails, etc. (not papers or assignments, though) in Italian, since I don’t readily know the alt-codes for accents. But for something like this? Come on. The “insert symbol” menu isn’t hard to find. Even handwritten accents above the typed words would’ve been better.
#4 by Josh on November 21, 2008 - 10:05 pm
I work for a web company and my job involves reading text submitted by the general public – and I see this ALL the time. I don’t think most non-tech savvy people have any idea that you can actually type punctuation marks correctly.
#5 by seahedges on November 25, 2008 - 11:18 am
In fact Italian may replace written accents with an apostrophe: Caffè may be written caffe’, and no one seems to consider it amiss, as best I can see (admittedly Italian is a second language for me, tho I have lived in Italy for the past ten years. The apostrophe-cum-circumflex in crême takes the ga’teau.
–SEA, Asolo
#6 by 8Ypw8cARmuaaQhlReC1TVVZ1_uD5UipmfRo- on November 28, 2008 - 7:55 pm
Dead keys are used in order to generate some accents using the US-International keyboard layout. For “crème brûlée” (“crème brulée” is also acceptable according to Wikipedia), one would type “cr`eme br^ul’ee” and the computer would automatically place the accents.
Even with this in mind, I would definitely consider it apostrophe abuse.