Apostrophe catastrophe: Old Navy botches a big batch of T-shirts

Just in time for National Punctuation Day on Sept. 24 (please celebrate responsibly), Old Navy has unleashed one doozy of a linguistic blunder. I would love to say that the clothing chain was attempting to be ironic, but sadly, I’d be wrong.

Now, we all make mistakes. I, self-proclaimed grammar vigilante, spelled umbrage incorrectly just last week (umberage: wrong; umbrage: right). The difference is that I didn’t spell umbrage incorrectly on thousands of T-shirts that went out to stores all over the United States. Which brings me back to Old Navy.

Here’s the story: Old Navy printed sports T-shirts with “Lets go” across the front.

What’s wrong with that, you ask? Stare at the phrase “Lets go” long and hard. There should be an apostrophe after the “t” because it’s a contraction of “let us go,” right?

Right. (See? You did pay close attention in Sister Clare’s English class. Oh, wait, that was me.)

It gets better. This grammar goof was on T-shirts for—wait for it—colleges throughout the United States. Resulting in a green and yellow T-shirt that reads “Lets go Ducks” for the University of Oregon, or a scarlet and gray T-shirt that reads “Lets go Buckeyes” for The Ohio State University.