I watched a crime drama the other night in which the police declared a woman’s death an open-and-shut suicide. But when a private investigator arrived on the scene, he took one look at the suicide note and knew better.
The telltale clue? An errant apostrophe.
The woman had been an exceptional English teacher and the p.i. knew she wouldn’t be caught dead inserting an apostrophe in the possessive its.
That alone didn’t solve the case—merely opened it back up. But criminal minds best be warned: Those elementary English lessons do pay off in the real world. Good writing skills are important no matter what your line of work is. And something as small and seemingly meaningless as an apostrophe can lead to justice.
This article was originally published on Lull: Practicing Life Between the Past and the Future, 7 July 2009.
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