The Wisdom of Crowds

From The Age (that's an Australian newspaper, dummy):

JULIA Gillard has been [Australia]'s education minister for a little over two years, but her passion for grammar and punctuation has deep roots. As a solicitor at law firm Slater and Gordon in the 1980s and '90s, Ms Gillard would get her staff to chant: ''One cat's hat, two cats' hats, where do the apostrophes go?''

She told her biographer, Jacqueline Kent: ''If I got a letter with it done wrong I would draw a cat with a hat at the bottom in the hope it would come back right the next time. They all thought I was kind of strange.''

I dislike misplaced apostrophes too, but people who obsess over these kinds of things need a Perspectives & Priorities Refresher Course. Also let me take the opportunity to submit the view that people who get their staff to chant pretty much anything are only one step away from building gas chambers. Finally, "one cat's hat, two cats' hats, you're supposed to have a rhyme right here!"

(Pointer)