In the course of my working day, I receive a few dozen corrections, changes, additions, and deletions from any number of internal company websites. Normally I just make the change, however tedious, and move on.
This morning I recieved a change to a site's contact list. This list (bear with me through the boring bit here) is broken down into Segment Managers and Core Leads. Core Leads had a colon, and Segment Managers did not.
Segment Managers
212-444-5555
212-555-6666
Core Leads:
212-222-3333
212-333-4444
Got it? Okay. The person in charge of this site asked me to add an ' after "Segment Managers." An apostrophe. So that it would read Segment Managers'.
...Segment Managers' what, exactly?
So I did the sensible thing, and used a : instead, assuming that is what he meant. Which was fine, until he wrote back again to confirm that he did, indeed, want an '.
"Are you sure you don't want it to read Segment Managers: to match the way that the header below reads Team Leads: ? Adding an apostrophe to the end of Managers isn't grammatically correct." I asked him. Diplomatically, I might add, since the first draft of my letter included the phrase, "Actually, you're wrong."
I was prepared to totally go all Strunk and White on his ass when he replied. And, surprisingly, agreed with me.
"You are correct," he said.
But then he continued. "It should read with a semi-colon. Thanks."
...
Yeah.
I know.
Fortunately for grammar and all that is right in the world, I accidentally deleted the part of the email that had the "semi-" in it.