I used to work in a clothing factory. One of the items we made was a child’s t-shirt with a couple of eskimos rubbing their noses together on it. And by that I mean it was a picture of two eskimos, not two actual eskimos stapled to it. And they weren’t rubbing their noses on the t-shirt, but rather on each other.

Anyway, in case anyone was unclear about what the picture represented (like you probably are by now) it said “Kissing Eskimo’s” on it. Behold the power of the apostrophe – I asked management what part of the eskimo was being kissed, or perhaps what possession, but they didn’t know. I think they were too busy looking at the contract to see who was liable for the mistake.

Note: Eskimo is often considered an offensive term, but while checking whether I should be putting an ‘e’ near the end I find that it’s actually a reasonably accurate, inclusive term that the allegedly more acceptable term ‘Inuit’ doesn’t match. All Inuit are Eskimos, as are all Inupiaq, and all Yupik, but the reverse does not hold. In any case, this was all back before we did respect to foreigners. Like we do now.