Apostrophes In The Wrong Place Piss Me Off

BlytheWood
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

It’s not that difficult, seriously! Yet everywhere I look, it’s wrong.

What am I talking about? Apostrophes.

Basically they serve two simple functions. The first being ownership and the second showing omission of letters, when forming a contraction. They are not necessary for forming plural nouns or possessive adjectives, but you’d think they were absolutely vital according to some signs and texts I’ve seen recently.

At the airport today, there’s a sign telling me about buses and taxi’s arriving every five minutes. A professional sign, made by what I might wrongly have assumed, a professional sign writer. Or driving past a well known fast-food joint today, I happened upon Western Burger’s. This sign was advertising a world wide company and their products. Driving past a local pizza shop I read Crustys Pizza. I’ve never heard the word Crustys (sounds like Cruss-tiss) before and hope I never have to again.

I really need to carry around a black Sharpie and attend to these issues.

There’s also a reading and writing teacher I know. 29 years experience and an inability to use apostrophes in any way. Emails received from her reveal, “Im happy its the last week of term”. When pressed on the subject she remarked “I’ve never got the hang of them and I’m too old to learn.”

This is a scary thought. If some teachers declare defeat, then what hope is there for the younger generation? Now obviously this person is a one-off and most teachers have excellent punctuation and grammar skills — but it does give one cause for concern.

Admittedly there are times when apostrophes might give you pause for thought. What if a word ends in S, say Jesus? Well, in this case both Jesus’ and Jesus’s are deemed accurate. For those trickier times it’s fine to use a source of good grammar and spelling to clarify, if you’re not sure. But, for those simpler examples, possessives and contractions, it really makes a person want to roll their eyes in despair.

And before I close, I was always taught not to begin a sentence with a conjunction, such as but or and. My primary teacher Miss Walker positively forbade it, waving an old slipper about as a caution to our backsides should we choose to ignore her rules. The elimination of these conjunctions has no real foundation in excellent writing, but was brought about by teachers (Thanks Miss Walker) in an effort to curtail excess usage in children’s writing.

I for one am happy to ignore my second grade teacher and live on the wild side.

BlytheWood
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