In Case of Rapture, Punctuation Shall Be Discarded

  Driving home the other day, I was stuck in traffic behind a car whose license plate holder read "IN CASE OF RAPTURE CARS YOURS".  (For you hardcore presbyterians utterly unfamiliar with dispensationalism, the "Rapture" is supposedly when Christians will all suddenly disappear to go be with Jesus, resulting in sundry piles of clothing, vehicles careening out of control, and severely understaffed customer-support call centers.  Thus, given what I experience in a typical day in a large city, it may have already occurred.)

  It appears that, for space considerations, a significant portion of the intended sentence was ellided;  one is supposed to read the second part of the sentence as "this car is yours."  Such an ellision is perfectly acceptable, grammatically speaking.  What is not acceptable is the actual sentence's absolute omission of punctuation.  The opening clause should be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma;  still worse, the abbreviation of "car is" to "car's" requires an apostrophe.  Since traffic wasn't moving, I was able to analyze and reconstruct this grammatical monstrosity at my leisure.  Had it not been, I likely would have rear-ended the vehicle which bore it, and would have had good grounds to hold its driver at fault for the collision.

  In our day and age, I suppose it's too much to expect every car-owner to remember punctuation is an essential element of our language when mounting a license plate.  What makes me weep, however, is the realization this license plate holder had to have been designed and printed by someone before it was bought by the hapless driver ahead of me in traffic.  The language barbarians control the means of print production.  What hope, then, does English have?