An apostrophe is one of the most maligned and misused punctuation marks, even though its uses are fairly simple: 1) to show possession and 2) to replace missing letters, as in contractions like “they’ll” and “can’t.” It appears to be the latter usage that this Taylor Swift merch was trying for, proudly proclaiming on a floral shirt a lyric from “Me!,” Swift’s new single with Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie: “Your’e the only one of you/Baby that’s the fun of you.”
As savvy grammarians may spy, that apostrophe is in the wrong place: “Your’e” should read “You’re.” It’s the kind of error that makes copy editors break out in hives, even more so since this mistake is permanent on who knows how many Taylor Swift shirts, and the shirt has already been out for about a month. The typo is even more ironic when you consider the grammar-forward theme of Swift’s latest single, in which she announces, “Spelling is fun!.” Another shirt states the “Me!” lyric “You can’t spell awesome without ‘me.’”
Page Six points out that Swift fans were quick to hit social media about the mistake, where they speculated on whether the misspelling makes that $55 shirt even more valuable or if it suggests that the error is some kind of easter egg for Swift’s forthcoming seventh album. Nice try, but we doubt the misplaced apostrophe was intentional. In fact, we suspect the new album’s liner notes will be getting an extra go-round at the proofreaders after this.