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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009The best grocer's apostrophe yet.
Yesterday, my wife asked me to take some cardboard boxes to the rubbish dump for her. I am not sure where she got them from, but she had used them to store Christmas presents, and had no further use for them. One of the boxes had been originally used by a wholesaler of household linen to dispatch three sets of their product. The label stated:- Contents: 3 Each's There is a perverse logic to this label. "3 of each" includes the apparent genitive "of each", which logically becomes "each's". How would you explain this one to a foreigner learning English? Richard Chambers Leeds UK. > Yesterday, my wife asked me to take some cardboard boxes to the rubbish dump > for her. I am not sure where she got them from, but she had used them to [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > genitive "of each", which logically becomes "each's". How would you explain > this one to a foreigner learning English? "Explain ... English." Oxymoron? Perce (dual-citizen OzBrit -- aka "whingeing Pommie bastard" -- in exile in US Midwest) > Yesterday, my wife asked me to take some cardboard boxes to the rubbish > dump for her. I am not sure where she got them from, but she had used them [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > apparent genitive "of each", which logically becomes "each's". How would > you explain this one to a foreigner learning English? I'm afraid the explanation is much simpler than you imagine. Goods can come by the box (or by the case, etc.), with multiples of the item in each box, and priced by box. The other possibility is that they in individual units, either pre-packaged or in bulk, and are priced at so-much each. The word "each", I am afraid, gets used nowadays in shipping and billing jargon as a parallel to "box", as a count noun, so you can have three eaches (GreengrocerE "three each's") in a shipment.  SignatureRoland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food. NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it. > The word "each", I am afraid, gets used nowadays in shipping and billing > jargon as a parallel to "box", as a count noun, so you can have three > eaches (GreengrocerE "three each's") in a shipment. Interesting. When I Google "eaches", I find some discussion and agonizing about whether this is a good word. There's a blog article by someone in Canada about encountering the word for the first time and puzzling it out; I won't copy and paste it here but it's worth following the link: http://cephalogenic.blogspot.com/2006/04/to-eaches-own.html Other places, other uses: -- (no inner packs or eaches) -- bunch of eaches mixed together in a box -- Qty's shown in eaches except limited species sold in flat size And a computer dilemma: Asked by maryann caulfield on 9/20/2007 1:44 PM I have a box of 24 eaches. There is not enough material to meet an order & the system should say there is not enough available rather than split the box. It is saying .023 of a box. How can I stop this from happening and prevent the allowance of a split each? SignatureBest -- Donna Richoux >> The word "each", I am afraid, gets used nowadays in shipping and >> billing jargon as a parallel to "box", as a count noun, so you can [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > from happening and prevent the allowance of a split > each? (Too funny to snip, for the time being.) That explains a very nasty habit practised in public by Sainsbury's. On the price-breakdown small print of their shelf labels, where, for example, a price per kilo is expressed as a "per pound" equivalent, prices of things packed by number are equivaled as "...per each". I had until now thought it was only young Sainsbury's dumb consultant who did this naughty thing. SignatureMike. >>> The word "each", I am afraid, gets used nowadays in shipping and >>> billing jargon as a parallel to "box", as a count noun, so you can [quoted text clipped - 33 lines] >until now thought it was only young Sainsbury's dumb consultant who did >this naughty thing. Musing on this and variations: "7.7p per each" looks odd -- "per" already includes a degree of "eachness". "7.7p for each" is less odd than the "per" version. The de-"per"-"for"-ated version "7.7p each" is unremarkable. SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in alt.usage.english) >> The word "each", I am afraid, gets used nowadays in shipping and billing >> jargon as a parallel to "box", as a count noun, so you can have three >> eaches (GreengrocerE "three each's") in a shipment. I thought the correct shipping and billing jargon was "pieces" (abbr. "PC" or "PCS"), along with "per piece" (in parallel with "per tonne", etc.). > Asked by maryann caulfield > on 9/20/2007 1:44 PM [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > from happening and prevent the allowance of a split > each? Have I missed a post, or has no-one else thought of _The Sneetches_? I'll make you again the best Sneetches on beaches, And all it will cost you is ten dollars eaches! (Seuss 1961) SignatureBob just used 'canonical' in the canonical way. [Guy Steele] >>> The word "each", I am afraid, gets used nowadays in shipping and billing >>> jargon as a parallel to "box", as a count noun, so you can have three [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > (abbr. "PC" or "PCS"), along with "per piece" (in parallel with "per > tonne", etc.). May be -- but I've received any number of invoices with pricing by the "ea.". SignatureRoland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food. NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to remove spam. 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