Fwd: greengrocer's apostrophe in action

[Laurence Horn]

>  >In case anyone thought this was a dying practice, or wanted some
>>real-life examples, here's a spam I just received.  Note in
>>particular the greeting sentence.
>>
>>L
>>--- begin forwarded text
>>
>>To: laurence.horn at yale.edu
>>From: Gunner <Trent at wyom.net>
>>Subject: Climb Aboard the Small-Cap Gravy Train
>>Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 00:29:13 -0700
>>
>>***WATCH THIS ONE AUGUST 5-15 AS WE KNOW MANY OF YOU LIKE MOMENTUM***
>>
>>Timing is everything!
>>
>>Profits of 300-400% EXPECTED
>>SYMBOL: CWTD
>>(Ticker: CWTD.OB)
>>Price: $2.42
>>10-Day Target: $10
>>
>>Good day to all broker's, Day Trader's and Investor's  World stock report
>>has become famous with some great stock picks in the otc , small cap
>>market's!!!!!!!!!!    Here at World Stock Report we work on what we here
>>from the street. Rumor's circulating and keeping the focus on the company's
>>news. We pick our companies based on there growth potential. We focus on
>>stocks that have great potential to move up in price.!!!!!!!!!! While giving
>>you liquitity.
>>
>>...
>>--- end forwarded text
>~~~~~~~~
>How come they missed companie's?
>AM

Right.  Actually, as we've discussed, these are more likely to pop up
after vowels--not so much "companie's" but "taco's", "radio's", and
such.  I guess writers who use them after consonant's take it one
step further.  I suspect someone's done a corpus study of these
somewhere; if not, someone probably should.

L