Apostrophes, part 2

In my "Apostrophe News" entry of a week ago, I said that I hadn't seen anyone point out that the city council of Birmingham, England, was following in the footsteps of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names when it banished apostrophes from street signs. That's because I didn't read Michael Quinion's discussion of the flap as carefully as it deserved.

Quinion concludes: 

My impression is that fashion, the real difficulties that exist in some cases, and -- particularly -- the absence of firm teaching of grammar and punctuation in school, are all leading to an accelerating decline in the correct use of the mark.

I couldn't agree more. If everybody understood the rules governing apostrophes, there would be less temptation to break them. If we didn't see the rules broken all the time, we'd find it easier to understand what the rules are, and apostrophes would be better able to do their job.    

Comments

The most interesting misuse of apostrophes that I have seen is one in which a friend of mine, who is a cabinet maker, chronically and consistently uses apostrophes with contracted words not to signify the missing letter or letters, but rather to signify the location in which the two words are contracted. He writes "does'nt" rather than "doesn't," as an example, every time. As an English teacher, this bugged me no end until I realized the guy has made his living joining things together.

Posted by CitizenE | February 9, 2009 12:22 PM

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press

Posted by phhht | February 9, 2009 7:48 PM

"I didn't read Michael Quinion's discussion of the flap as carefully as it deserved."

Maybe his comment about Birmingham wasn't in there when you posted on 1 Feb; the comma page reads: "Page created 7 Sep 1996 Last updated 7 Feb 2009"

Posted by Nicholas Waller | February 10, 2009 8:08 AM

I can't think of an instance where punctuation is more useful than the use of an apostrophe distinguishing between an "s" at the end of a word used to express plural or to indicate possession, yet is one of the most common errors I see.

Posted by Sabo Pike | February 10, 2009 10:49 AM

I agree that the use of apostrophes to signify s ends a word, particularly to signify plurality is annoying. The confusion in style books about apostrophe usage with plurals is equally annoying, and is why so many people make errors. Language outside of schools has had the historical tendency to simplify. Personally, I wouldn't mind if we dropped apostrophes altogether, beginning with any or all pluralization--the ps and qs of this are a trival pursuit, and allowed context to provide the correct understanding. I realize that goes counter to the basic advantage of English in its thrust for precision, but really I have spent as many hours correcting or discussing the appropriate use of apostrophes and as I have doing far more important things in life and I can rarely remember when an apostrophe error caused me any confusion of sense.

Posted by CitizenE | February 10, 2009 12:53 PM

You all might want to check out the Gallery of Misued Quotation Marks. The comments are hilarious.

http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/

Posted by La Vonne Miller | March 25, 2009 4:23 PM