Apostrophe Abuse

Ugh! The abuse of the apostrophe is truly one of the biggest problems affecting our society today. It’s not the worst infringement, but I hate when people use “‘s” to make abbreviations and things plural (like “she made all A’s” or “in the 1960′s”). I think it upsets me because I used to do this at somepoint, but nowhere in any grammar books does it tell you to do this. It’s just a bad habit. I can almost understand why some people want to just abolish this punctuation mark altogether.

Somewhat related… you might get a kick out of my blog entry on a couple of painfully bad sentences I found in the NYTimes.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Apostrophes are necessary to language like milk is necessary to cereal.

True, one could infer meaning from context, pronunciation, and other keys to meaning. But why have the reader go through such dry-chewing gymnastics when it isn’t necessary? Wouldn’t a little cool milk help that heavy fiber cereal go down a little better?

Those who argue otherwise are just lazy, in my opinion.

“Apostrophes are necessary to language like milk is necessary to cereal.
True, one could infer meaning from context, pronunciation, and other keys to meaning. But why have the reader go through such dry-chewing gymnastics when it isn’t necessary? Wouldn’t a little cool milk help that heavy fiber cereal go down a little better?

Those who argue otherwise are just lazy, in my opinion.”

Well well anonymous, you contradict yourself magnificently here. You ask: “why have the reader go through such dry-chewing gymnastics when it isn’t necessary?” Then you say: “Those who argue otherwise are just lazy, in my opinion.” Whos the lazy one? Did the absence of an apostrophe in “whos” really require a huge effort to interpret the question?

My parents live in New Zealand, and while I was there in December I became convinced that that country may have the highest apostrophe abuse rate in the world. Seriously, almost all the signs I saw said things like “Nacho’s” and “Beer’s.”