Words: 'n', conj.

LISA JARDINE is quoted in Prospect as being of the opinion that Shakespeare is "a pick `n' mix playwright". That this reduces him to the level of a cheap-candy stall in Woolworth's need not delay us (he has weathered worse, usually at the National), but it is instructive to compare this with a remark by Salman Rushdie in The New York Times: "Pick 'n' mix [is] at the heart of the modern, and hasn't it been that way for most of this all-shook-up century?"

His rock 'n' roll take on culture has at least got the punctuation right: 'n' lacks an "a" and "d" - hence there should be two apostrophes to indicate their omission, not quotation marks. Even the Apple system does not grasp this: it's a matter of cut-and-pasting the second apostrophe, to put it in front of the "n".