[besson3c]

This isn't a rant about how the apostrophe confuses people, but out of all of the grammar rules that exist, the apostrophe seems really clear to me. I often mistake it's with its, I can understand being confused with where to use a comma, what the semi-colon does, etc. but I don't understand why it is difficult to remember that an apostrophe is not used to make things plural, for instance?

Also, in comparison to many other forms of punctuation (e.g. the comma, semi-colon), the apostrophe can have a profound influence on the meaning of a sentence. Do you ever find yourself doing a double take at sentences you read with an incorrectly placed apostrophe? If this is common enough, why don't people take the time to learn about how to use the apostrophe? Is it that complicated?

[Doofy]

Paging Bob to the lounge, Bob to the lounge please.

[kmkkid]

its because apostrophe's are just plain hard.

[BlueSky]

Sometimes I use the apostrophe to make something plural even though I know it's wrong. For example if I refer to a buncha PNG files, I'll occasionally type PNG's. PNGs just doesn't look right.

Don't try to stop me. I'm a rebel.

[Jawbone54]

'S'o' 'w'h'a't d'o'e's t'h'i's d'o f'o'r y'a?
They're everywhere!

[Buckaroo]

It's also odd how we accidentally use to when we should use too.

[Cold Warrior]

The Apostrophe

When I was being taught this stuff, we were instructed to use apostrophes for plural initialisms. Now it seems you just add an s.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I often mistake it's with its, I can understand being confused with where to use a comma, what the semi-colon does, etc., but I don't understand why it is difficult to remember that an apostrophe is not used to make things plural, for instance?

Betterinated?

[harbinger75]

I'm with ya, buddy. The apostrophe, "too" and "to", their and they're...they're all pet peeves of mine. I just try to keep myself in line with them, and all is well.

[Oisín]

Also, in comparison to many other forms of punctuation (e.g. the comma, semi-colon), the apostrophe can have a profound influence on the meaning of a sentence.

1. So can all other punctuation marks, if omitted or swapped for a different punctuation mark (e.g., “You killed my wife!” vs., “You killed my wife?”)

2. Apostrophes are not punctuation marks at all. Punctuation marks function at sentential and suprasentential levels; apostrophes function at word level.

That said, I don’t understand why they’re so universally abused, either. They are fairly simple. I can understand why non-native speakers (who already use different rules for apostrophe assignation in their own native language) can get things messed up sometimes, but that doesn’t go for native speakers, obviously.

(An example: in Danish, the rules of when to add an apostrophe after an acronym/abbreviation is exactly the opposite of English—if the acronym/abbreviation ends in a period, there is no apostrophe; if there is no period, an apostrophe should be used. English, of course, has it the other way around.)

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Paging Bob to the lounge, Bob to the lounge please.

V

[Oisín]

Aaaah, that Bob.

I thought perhaps Bob was the new Bruce.

[starman]

Someone listen to Buzz Out Loud on Monday?

[osiris]

Bob says it like it is.

[nonhuman]

I think people are overestimating the intelligence and grasp of grammar that the average person has. My senior year of high school the majority of people in my English class couldn't tell you if a word was a noun, a verb, or an adjective unless they had actually memorized what part of speech that word actually was. When learning new vocabulary they had to specifically commit to memory not only the word itself and the definition, but the part of speech.

I remember learning in kindergarten that a noun is a 'person, place, thing, or idea', and yet 12 years later the majority of my classmates neither knew this rule nor could successfully apply it to unfamiliar words. Many of them couldn't even understand that words ending in '-ly' were usually adverbs. Again, even if they knew the definition of a word and could use it in a sentence they still couldn't identify its part of speech unless someone had told them before and they had memorized it.

And you really expect people to understand the proper use of apostrophes, or the difference between 'to' and 'too', or 'there', 'their', and 'they're'? I'm seriously impressed that the average person can string together an intelligible sentence, let alone spell it 'their' and not 'thier'.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Also, in comparison to many other forms of punctuation (e.g. the comma, semi-colon), the apostrophe can have a profound influence on the meaning of a sentence.

This is not quite correct. Misused punctuation of any kind can radically alter meaning.

Consider:

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

2. Apostrophes are not punctuation marks at all.

Wrong.

apostrophe 1 noun a punctuation mark ( ’ ) used to indicate either possession e.g., Harry’s book; boys’s coats or the omission of letters or numbers can’t; he’s; class of ’99 ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (denoting the omission of one or more letters): via late Latin, from Greek apostrophos ‘accent of elision,’ from apostrephein ‘turn away,’ from apo ‘from’ + strephein ‘to turn.’

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Tiresias 

This is not quite correct. Misused punctuation of any kind can radically alter meaning.

Consider:

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Good point!

[davedecay]

Because the Apostrophe (') is the crux of the biscuit.

Ground and Sky review - Frank Zappa - Apostrophe(')

[xi_hyperon]

I believe it's good to encourage proper apostrophe usage, but I think you guys just want to damage people's self-of-steam.

[besson3c]

"self-of-steam"? Heheh.... clever.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by davedecay 

Because the Apostrophe (') is the crux of the biscuit.

hmmmm biscut arrrgghhhh

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

hmmmm biscut arrrgghhhh

davedecay's spelling of "biscuit" is correct.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Tiresias 

Wrong.

apostrophe 1 noun a punctuation mark ( ’ ) used to indicate either possession e.g., Harry’s book; boys’s coats or the omission of letters or numbers can’t; he’s; class of ’99 ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (denoting the omission of one or more letters): via late Latin, from Greek apostrophos ‘accent of elision,’ from apostrephein ‘turn away,’ from apo ‘from’ + strephein ‘to turn.’

I see both the OS X Dictionary and Wikipedia classify an apostrophe as a punctuation mark.

I’d still argue that this is incorrect, but this seems to be a matter of how to define what a punctuation mark is.

The OS X Dictionary defines punctuation the same way I would: “The marks, such as period, comma, and parentheses, used in writing to separate sentences and their elements and to clarify meaning”.

Wikipedia, however, defines punctuation marks as, “symbols that correspond to neither phonemes (sounds) of a language nor to lexemes (words and phrases), but which serve to indicate the structure and organization of writing, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading it aloud”. An apostrophe (in English) is of course neither phoneme nor lexeme, but it doesn’t indicate the structure or organisation of writing, either; nor does it say anything about intonation or pause. But since punctuation is defined as, “Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers”, it makes sense to include it there.

I’ve always been taught the former of these two approaches, and I’ve never before seen punctuation as a term applied to everything in written language other than letters and numbers—nor do I think it makes sense.

But I’ll accept there are varying standards on this and consider my horizont widened.

[turtle777]

I wish I could add something witty to this discussion.

Ah' well'.

-t

[TETENAL]

This must be one of the worst apostrophe mistakes in the English language ever:

Apple - Support - Discussions - HOW MUCH DOE'S ITUNES COST ? ...

In that persons defense: he doesn't seem to be very bright generally and he probably was in some kind of rage when writing this.