If you write clearly, readers will scan right over grammatical faux pas like a possesive its or your instead of the contraction it's or you're. When writing becomes cloudy, thoughts on the page come out confused, it may become necessary to clarify by scrutinizing the placement of an apostrophe.
My favorite recent example was simple. It's a tin tub that some baba may use for clothes washing. It's sold in Walmarts here, in the recreation section. Yep, one woman's daily grunt work is another man's tail gating -- we have here a grammatically incorrect ice + beer repository. On its side, embossed and unpainted, is the phrase:
Drink's
No prep-phrase, no further punctuation, no other thing on the other tin side.
I can only assume two situations leading up to this fantastic proclamation.
Drink is...
Drink owns...
Drink is actually an entity, person even, and he/she/it owns the contents of this bin. The fact that this implication is stamped there, far more permanent than flimsy, weather-susceptible paint, is quite the statement. Someone really wants you to know that the contents of this bin is DRINKS, except that they look dumb. The extra emphasis of physical form, and its being all in CAPS, makes this drink toter look particularly headlong crazy stupid. Not to mention that you need a specific bin for such a purpose, not just any bin, and this bin is not insulated like a cooler. The entire existence makes me a little giddy.
Another example, not from Walmart, not for plebs, is the acronym MOBIS. Mission Oriented Buisness Integrated Services. It sounds so good and encompassing and solidly important that it cannot help being a stand-out, motivational, desirable thing for you and your employees, or you and your degree, or you and your future. It should be on a poster with a dolphin.
However, if you are a noob to the business-sphere (as most professional volunteers are) you may look up this stand-out acronym. It may confuse you with its lead-fisted mission to inform you in as few words as possible.
Here is what I would do:
Mission-Oriented, Business-Integrated Services
Because it is four adjectives and a noun. The human eye can recognize three things in a clump together immediately, but four starts confusing it. Either your brain can clump it into two groups of two and do intuitive multiplication, or it can count one through four, or it can recognize three and add one. If your brain is like mine, it tries to run all three of these algorithms at once. If not, well done to your brains.
Grammar exists to asuage and expedite these sorts of things. By clumping the four adjectives into two groups of two adjectives it takes some of the pressure off uninformed brains. The hyphens clump, and the comma separates. The hyphens also show that the two noun/adjectives are describing the plain adjectives (I'm not so good I know the real terms for those, I'm pretty primitive myself).
Alternatively it could be:
Mission-Oriented, Business, Integrated Services
Not as physically pretty on the page, but still effective, takes down the adjectives to three (still intuitively recognizable). It does, however, change the meaning. This is where people who pay grammar, and in particular punctuation, lose their readers.
Are the services integrated? Is the business these services serve integrated? Are they business services that are integrated?
Without punctuation, you'd never know. They're just words in the ether of interpretation.
At least "Mission-Oriented" seems pretty straight forward. There's little other thing for either of these adjectives to be interpreting.
I know, this may be overkill. It may over analyse the message. You could argue the jumble of adjectives get the message across sufficiently without the grammar, and besides it's an acronym---people don't even pronounce the actual words! They pronounce the word "mobis", like mobil, but through a snake's mouth.
I stand by the idea that if MOBIS is a term to describe bettering your product (services are products) then you are falsely advertising the effectiveness of said product. That's all. It's bad, so the seller is bad, and I wouldn't spend my money there.
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