I bet dem "O‘s" dont spel to gud, either

by zknower on Feb 4, 2009 3:50 PM EST in Commentary Comment 40 comments

I apologize in advance for taking up front page real-estate for this, but I have to raise a stink.

What's wrong with this picture?

If you said, "The apostrophe is f***ing upside-down/backwards!" you answered correctly.

I discovered this when alerted by a friend to this post over on uniwatch (an awesome site, if you don't know it, btw). The preceding link takes you to a long list of items, and halfway down is the review of our inept typography:

Apostrophe Catastrophe, Continued: This is the Baltimore Orioles’ official team art/logo sheet (and please don’t bother asking me where I got it or how you can get a bigger version of it). Seems straightforward enough, until you take a closer look at these.

Can you f***ing believe that?

Now, I realize an argument can be made that there shouldn’t be an apostrophe there at all, because plurals don’t take apostrophes. But you could also argue that the apostrophe is standing in for "riole," plus "O’s" is less visually awkward than "Os" would be, plus-plus there’s a strong precedent for using an apostrophe in this type of logo. So let’s assume that the apostrophe belongs there.

But once you’ve decided it belongs there, how can anyone who got past the third grade orient it incorrectly?

This small but telling example of illiteracy (and make no mistake, that’s exactly what it is) extends to Baltimore’s alternate cap, BP cap, "portion of the proceeds" cap, and other gear. It’s been part of the team’s official graphics program since 2005, and I’m embarrassed not to have noticed it until now.

But the people who should really be embarrassed are the IQ-32 types who executed and approved this logo design. C’mon, a backwards apostrophe? Being worn by a major league sports franchise? And the culpability isn’t limited to the Orioles’ front office — how come nobody at MLB Properties said anything when this logo design came across their desks? How come nobody at New Era said, "Y’know, that cap doesn’t look quite right"? Guilty, each and every one of them.

And people wonder why America’s going down the crapper.

I'm right there with this guy. I'm in the "no apostrophe" camp myself, but if you're going to have it, can't you at least set it the right way? This has been on the logo since 2005? ARE WE TRYING TO MAKE BALTIMORE LOOK LIKE AN ILLITERATE CITY?

Please, please, tell me someone else cares about this, and that we can raise enough hell to get the front office to fix it, pronto. Thancks vary mutch.

Poll

Having incorrect punctuation as part of the official team logo is

Embarassing. They should change it ASAP.

174 votes

No big deal. Seriously, get a life, dude.

113 votes

287 votes | Poll has closed

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Comments

I’d like to drop the “s” completely. Just have the “O” logo.

Or invent a “crapping bird” logo (they could have both cartoon and ornithologically correct versions) for the alternate logo.

I wonder if I can bill Jeff Lurie and Peter Angelos for the years of therapy their teams are going to put me through.

by BrianS on Feb 4, 2009 3:56 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I just saw..

a bird crap at lunch. That vivid picture will be with me all season watching this year’s version take the field…

How could he be doing his job when he didn't throw me out of the game after the things I called him?

On arguing with ump Russ Goetz.

Mark Henry Belanger

by Birdland in NC on Feb 4, 2009 9:15 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I'm in the pro-apostrophe camp

It’s a contraction. The fact that it’s a contraction of a plural doesn’t eliminate the need for an apostrophe.

But for god’s sake, if one is to use an apostrophe, use it right-side-up.

by punkrawka on Feb 4, 2009 4:09 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

"It's a contraction."

That’s what she said.

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Churchill,1942-- a rebuilding year.

by Titov on Feb 6, 2009 11:29 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I hate that logo anyway

I would never spend money on an “O’s” hat.

The only reason we wear that hat on Fridays is so that the logo actually gets credibility. If we never played in it, no one would buy it. And that’s really the only reason the hat exists: to get people to buy it.

Now, who really has a need for multiple Orioles hat when one is enough? Someone like me, I guess, who never remembers his hat during a day game in left field… I have about a dozen caps now, and none have that logo on it. It’s just so stupid.

The stock market will never recover, our armies will never again be #1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of their lives - HST

by the fix is in on Feb 4, 2009 4:14 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I hate it, too

And I also have a bunch of caps and will never ever sport that dumbass O’s logo. Interestingly enough (at least to me) over 10 years ago I bought an Orioles cap with just a cursive “O” on it for five bucks from a shoe store that was going out of business. The cap was a putty color and the O was blue with red trim. No idea what that was all about, but it was cool. I don’t know why I hate the addition of just two characters.

by brooksflow on Feb 5, 2009 12:40 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

+1

We aren’t the friggin Athletics. Put the cartoon back on the hat and lets call it a day.

"Hey Yankees... you can take your apology and your trophy and shove 'em straight up your ass!" --Tanner Boyle

by BirdFanInPhilly on Feb 5, 2009 10:34 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"the friggin Athletics"-- Best t-shirts of the 70's, much frowned upon by C. Finley:

The F*ckin’s A’s

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Churchill,1942-- a rebuilding year.

by Titov on Feb 6, 2009 11:31 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Remember the old city slogan....

The City that reads good!
or
The City that Ed Reed’s

I’m in the contraction camp, personally.. And font design being what it is, I’m not so sure it was intentionally rotated, or if some designer thought it might look cool..

“Save all that energy for the field” – Lou Brown.

by mpire on Feb 4, 2009 4:18 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I have multiple hats with that logo on it, and some of them are oriented properly, including the on-field hat I have from a couple years back.

"You have to discipline yourself so you don't come out with something just to say you made a trade. You have to make sure you come out better than you were before." - Andy MacPhail, 7/31/08

by getxstoked on Feb 4, 2009 4:35 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I actually think I’ve seen such an upside down apostrophe lately. Can’t remember what it was but I remember thinking it looked strange and maybe its some design fad.

by Steve. on Feb 4, 2009 4:44 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

It's not an error...

somebody just though it looked better upside down. It’s a logo – it doesn’t have to be typographically correct.

by uneasy rider on Feb 4, 2009 5:43 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

It's embarrassing.

But only because our hats say “O’s” instead of “B”.

Bird or “B”. The only way for me. We aren’t the “A’s”. (who, incidentally, have a straightforward apostrophe)

From the Land of Pleasant Living...

by OEutaw on Feb 4, 2009 6:01 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

the best part....

Sales will be steady within the drug dealing market as O’s = ounces

by salvotion on Feb 4, 2009 7:05 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

And....

The… Pornstar…. market?

by mpire on Feb 4, 2009 10:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

What would Os mean?

That apostrophe is for clarifying the single-letter noun. If the logo didn’t have it – Os – it could almost look like the word Oz spoken with a lisp, or for tech-nerd nation, operating system. Same goes for the A’s – the Oakland As? As what? It’s a good thing their cap doesn’t have As’s amidst an apostrophe debate. Indeed, the apostrophe is turned upside-down to enhance appearance.
I got that alternate cap the first year it came out (‘05) as an alternative to the bird. If it has to be a bird on the cap, be it a unique, charismatic logo w/simplistic stitching, a la the 70s-80s cartoon bird. The current ’natural bird’ logo is a product of periodic ornithological tweaks over the past two decades, not necessarily portraying character. (The worst was the pigeon-looking one from 10 years ago, yeesh.) The anatomically-accurate game cap says ‘Birdwatching Society, sponsored by MLB’. Still wear ’em though :)

by waverider on Feb 4, 2009 11:02 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Os

would be plural of “O”. As in a nickname. “O” instead of “Oriole”. “He’s an O. He’s playing for the Os.”

When my dad and I watched the team growing up, we referred to them as the Os or the Birds. The usage was always with “O” being a nickname. “Harold Baines might be an O before the month is over”.

When you hear “Os” (or “O’s” if you prefer), doesn’t it mean plural of “O” to you? If it were a contraction then by extension, you wouldn’t have the Yanks, or the Cards; you’d have the Yank’s and the Card’s. Looks pretty stupid, doesn’t it?

by zknower on Feb 4, 2009 11:39 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

O's is short for "Orioles"

I can respect your position if you’ve actually called individual players an “O” in the singular, but I never really have. And Os still looks like its own proper noun, which is potentially confusing — Yanks/Cards don’t have that drawback.

by punkrawka on Feb 5, 2009 6:35 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"Cards" doesn't look like its own proper noun?

Well, it looks like its own noun, at least. Deck of cards. But people don’t get confused and think the St. Louis players are parts of a hand of poker. They know it’s short for “Cardinals” because they follow the team.

A martian landing on the earth might thing they were the St. Louis playing Cards, and might think we are the Baltimore Operating System–but anyone who remotely follows sports would figure it out.

by zknower on Feb 5, 2009 12:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Like you admitted upfront

Cards wouldn’t be a proper noun… confusion immediately eliminated. And Os isn’t going to make people think Operating System — that would be OS. Os, to me, looks like a name, pronounced Oz, and does not make me think of a shorthand team name. Also, if we apply your rule universally (which any good grammar rule should be), As would be massively confusing. As in as. Or is it as in As? See the problem?

P.S. Don’t read any antagonism into this, I’m just bullshitting at this point.

by punkrawka on Feb 5, 2009 2:09 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

no offense taken

I think the difference is that “As” actually is a word, whereas “Os” actually is not. But I see where people would trip over it.

by zknower on Feb 5, 2009 9:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Y'mean, What does it mean?

The os is the external orifice of the uterus; it is the opening at the tip of the cervix which separates the uterus from the vagina.

But why stop there? Os may also refer to:

Os, Hedmark, a municipality in Norway
Os, Hordaland, a municipality in Norway
Os, Østfold, a parish in Norway
Ōs, in Old English denoting a god in Anglo-Saxon paganism
Osmium, a chemical element whose symbol is “Os”
the Ossetic language (ISO 639-1)
Os Guinness (born 1941), English author and social critic
Os du Randt (born 1972), South African rugby player

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS

And boy, do I super heart the ornithologically correct Oriole. People can lynch me for saying so, but the Smiley Bird thing was more low rent than the ethnically inconsiderate Cleveland Indian and Atlanta’s Chief Nokahoma. I mean, birds were staying away from our games, they were so offended.

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Churchill,1942-- a rebuilding year.

by Titov on Feb 6, 2009 11:46 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

As cheesy as the cartoon smiling bird was,

it really exemplifies the times in my opinion. I also associate it with winning, which is more than I can say for the ortho-proper current edition. They can flip flop it, outline it, and highlight it all they want…it still represents the politically correct boringness that this world is now full of.

The blues have always been American, as American as apple pie. The question is...why?

by sickuvitall on Feb 8, 2009 2:08 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

also,

An apostrophe is an apostrophe; it’s not a single closed quote. Apostrophes are always in the same orientation, unless they are just plain vertical, a style that came from a typewriter gimmick to conserve keys.

Inverting the apostrophe is really using a single close quote and is no different than using some other type of punctuation: an accent aigu (´) kind of looks like an apostrophe too, but you can’t just slip it in there because you’re having a creative day.

by zknower on Feb 4, 2009 11:43 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Spell of out with a balmer accent

Oes!

by mpire on Feb 5, 2009 7:10 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

It's not backwards.

It doesn’t matter what the apostrophe looks like ‘cause it’s written in cursive. If you make an apostrophe when writing in cursive you usually make the stroke from the top down, so the bottom would definitely look fatter. The same goes for Chinese characters.

by kurisu55 on Feb 5, 2009 8:00 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

??

I’ve never heard this rule for cursive. Are you telling me that commas in cursive are the same way? Doubtful.

by zknower on Feb 5, 2009 12:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

No rules chief

True, a Times New Roman comma and apostrophe would come out inverted, but it’s cursive, so it doesn’t really matter how it looks-it all depends on your writing style. Also, I messed up, I just took a calligraphy pen and wrote “O’s” about 20 times and I definitely make the apostrophe stroke from the bottom up ’cause the plural “s” is so small, so I have to move my pen upwards (contrary to what I thought). After this experiment I still noticed that most of my apostrophes looked fat on the southern end. Go buy a soft, felt tip calligraphy pen for a dollar and try it out (if your bored).

by kurisu55 on Feb 5, 2009 9:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Who care's? Whats the difference? Its a cap.

I actually I care (former English teacher) and agree with the poster. But I couldn’t resist.

Has there ever been a cooler Oriole than Eddie Murray? I mean, just straight up cool. Like a bad, suave dude. You know what I'm sayin'. COOL. SC 7/24/08

by 33 on Feb 5, 2009 8:48 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I hear you

But it’s on other gear as well. ;) But yeah, this isn’t world hunger or anything.

by zknower on Feb 5, 2009 12:27 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I don't care

I like the “O’s” logo personally, although I wouldn’t mind seeing it scrapped for a B. It appears that they made the decision to make the apostrophe look like that for aesthetic reasons. The tail on the O and the tip of the s go in the same direction. I don’t necessarily even think it looks upside down. As far as I’m concerned an apostrophe is just a vertical dash like this ’ . If anything it looks like an upside down comma.

[Guthrie's] president of my heart. ~PhilR8

by Stacey on Feb 5, 2009 9:09 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

and yet all the apostrophes in your post came out looking like right-side up commas. hmmmmm.

by zknower on Feb 5, 2009 12:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

On my computer

But when I write in script, my apostrophe doesn’t have any curve, my comma does. But whatever. I express apathy towards this subject.

[Guthrie's] president of my heart. ~PhilR8

by Stacey on Feb 5, 2009 12:35 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I don't have a problem with it, really

Both the presence of the apostrophe and it’s orientation don’t bother me. Maybe it was an aesthetic choice to have the apostrophe oriented so that it sort of flows with the flourish of the “O”.

Also, it’s “O’s” and not “Os”. Just like the “A’s”, as mentioned in the article.

by PhilR8 on Feb 5, 2009 11:22 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Fx the apostrophe

The official logo sheet linked above indicates that pantone 1655 is the official Oriole orange. A quick look on the web shows some variation in the RGB approximation. This site Pantone to RGB Chart has it as R249 G86 B2 (0xF95602). That same chart lists the other pantone official colors for Oriole black, gray, yellow, and red. Mayube the Web guy there at SB Nation can work these into the site.

by drj on Feb 5, 2009 12:27 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

and just to note

The O’s pantone red and yellow match the official specs for the Maryland Flag.

So even though they don’t know grammar rules in the Warehouse, they at least got the colors aligned with the flag.

by drj on Feb 5, 2009 12:31 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I've always thought Maryland had the coolest state flag.

hakkaa päälle !

by timg56 on Feb 5, 2009 4:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

really?

I thought the Md. flag was gold, not yellow. And the O’s had orange, not red

by mystery tramp on Feb 6, 2009 7:48 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The red and yellow specs are for the newly introduced patches. The O’s color matches the official state flag specs. I guess “golden” is a shade of yellow. In this case, it is pantone 124.

by drj on Feb 6, 2009 9:28 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

I bought that patch from eBay two weeks ago

Still deciding what to sew it onto. It’s a really handsome patch…. and the Orioles aren’t going to do anything with it other than slap it onto their sleeves. Really the patch would look good on almost anything…

I’ll just get it on this dinky knapsack that I carry all of my scorebooks, newspaper clippings, etc in.

It’s such a nice handsome patch.

The stock market will never recover, our armies will never again be #1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of their lives - HST

by the fix is in on Feb 6, 2009 10:23 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs