Go ’Cuse Typography
In our hometown, Syracuse University Basketball is getting tremendous attention; and for good reason. The Men’s basketball team is having another amazing season, demonstrating the talent of players and coaches. As much coverage as the team is getting in print, online and in television there’s equal coverage in a wearable medium. T-shirts. Orange T-shirts are exploding across the landscape fueled by the success of the team and events like the Orange-outs at the Dome. All this excitement has revealed a disturbing trend in bad typography, the abuse of the apostrophe. The diagram below illustrates the case.
Please note the angle — or directional bias— of the apostrophe in the two expressions above. If you’ve been in and around Syracuse lately, there are plenty of examples of the top image. Unfortunately, it’s incorrect. According to Wikipedia:
Apostrophe showing omission
An apostrophe is commonly used to indicate omitted characters:
- It is used in contractions, such as can’t from cannot, it’s from it is or it has, and I’ll from I will or I shall.
- It is used in abbreviations, as gov’t for government, or ‘ 70s for 1970s. In modern usage, apostrophes are generally omitted when letters are removed from the start of a word, particularly for a compound word. For example, it is not common to write ‘bus (for omnibus), ‘phone (telephone), ‘net (Internet). However, if the shortening is unusual, dialectal or archaic, the apostrophe may still be used to mark it (e.g., ‘bout for about, ‘less for unless, ‘twas for it was). Sometimes a misunderstanding of the original form of a word results in an incorrect contraction. A common example: ‘til for until, though till is in fact the original form, and until is derived from it.
The same is true if the same statement is set in a Serif typeface as in Exhibit B below.
For more typographic examples on how apostrophes are used, and the difference between the prime mark, accent, and apostrophe, CreativePro has an article by Akira Kobayashi.
As Syracuse residents, it’s exciting to see our city and local University get such great attention. Be sure you’re showing your Orange pride correctly with perfect typography. We’ve created a Go ’Cuse PDF for download. You can use this layout for your office party, game-day banner or print onto transfer material to make your own typographically correct t-shirt.
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3 Comments
While I completely understand the intent of this post – which is likely the result of driving around town and seeing bad art on people – I, too, am sent into grammar rage at the misuse of “your” and “you’re” – but I digress…though this comment comes following SU’s loss to Butler (apparently the result of wearing invisible oven mitts) and the abuse of the apostrophe has dwindled, it is still true that the downloadable PDF and this whole page is in violation of SU licensing and trademark guidelines. The word “‘Cuse” is a registered trademark of the University and its use in ANY form needs to be approved by Syracuse University Licensing. http://bookstore.syr.edu/123780/trademarks.html
Imagine how upset THEY get by those improper apostrphes! Now you know…
Trademark licensing is a related but separate issue to the core of this post. You are correct about the source…. around town, in stores, around the internet. I’m sure the products that I’ve seen — even the ones in major grocery chains — are not officially licensed products at all.
Thanks for including the link to Syracuse University Licensing, a great resource
After reviewing the licensing site, I don’t think that this page is in violation at all as it is an editorial observation. We’re not offering a product for sale. From their site::
“The Syracuse University licensing program was developed in 1981 to protect, promote and support the use of the Syracuse University name and trademarks on products in the marketplace.”