Back in June, I contributed to a crowd funding project. I’ve never done this before, not being a speculative type of person. However, the person I was helping to crowd fund is a particularly talented artist called Hayley and she was working hard towards achieving a dream of hers, which was to publish a diary based around the phases of the Moon. And as I love the Moon, astrology, and her art, as I say, is amazing, I made a pre-purchase of the diary launch bundle which consisted of the diary (obvs), a poster wall calendar, a bookmark, a sticker and this rather snazzy tote bag:
Hayley’s website is www.moonphasestudios.com
The crowd funder was successful and my bundle duly arrive at the beginning of October. The diary is lovely!
It’s nice and weighty, beautiful to hold, printed on good quality paper, and is set out very well inside. Packed with lovely stuff, it is, and it will be a pleasure to use. It starts on 12th December and covers the following 13 moon phases across 2024. I am very pleased with it…
…but…
…just one tiny niggle. I started reading the introductory pages and…well, you know I’m a writer and an English teacher and a pedant…
Can you see what made me wince? Yup, it’s a good old errant apostrophe. There! ‘In it’s broadest terms…’
I mean, come on. How many times do have I have to roll my eyes before the English-speaking world population gets this right? An apostrophe used in ‘it’s’ means the replacement of the letter ‘i’. It’s = it is. So this sentence actually says, ‘In it is broadest terms…’ which does not make sense. What was needed was ‘its’ to denote the ownership of ‘broadest’ to ‘terms.’ Basically, if you aren’t sure about your ‘it’s’ and your ‘its’, take out the apostrophe, replace it with an ‘i’ and if the sentence doesn’t make sense, you’ve got the wrong one.
Anyway, I’ve taken a deep breath and not lost any sleep over it. The diary, as I say, is beautiful and I am glad to have been able to help Hannah achieve her dream.
Whilst we are on Moon stuff, did you know that scientists now believe the Moon is 40 million years older than previously believed? Can you imagine the strength of the moisturiser the Lady Moon has been using to fool scientists about her age for so long? Her skin care regime must be amazing. I bet she never goes to bed in full make-up for a start AND I bet she drinks lots of water, doesn’t smoke and uses one of those jade face rollers.
‘Go on,’ said the Moon, ‘guess how old I am!’
‘Errr…4.5 billion years?’ said the scientist, who hates it when women ask him to guess their age, and so always errs on the side of caution.
‘Wrong by 40 million years!’ said the Moon, strutting off triumphantly into the night sky, and feeling just a little bit smug that she knew about collagen-based moisturisers waaaaaay before anyone else.
But then I found this little moon fact snippet…
Aaah, so THAT’s how she does it! Sod the application of rose oil this evening, then - I shall be pebble-dashing my face with gravel!
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KJ