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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

The Apostrophe Song



This video is right up my alley: At various jobs, I used to refer to myself as the “head of the apostrophe posse” because I hated the misuse of the little smudges of type. To be honest, I have no idea why.

However, in the years since, I’ve been cheered to find a lot of other people who share my apostrophe fanaticism. It's largely a secret war, and we have a few guerilla tactics we can use. For example, I’ve been known to erase errant apostrophes on chalkboards outside cafés or fruit and vege shops.

Mostly, though, I think that standing up for the poor apostrophe is a losing battle: I fully expect that one day it will be perfectly acceptable to use an apostrophe to make a word plural, and “it’s” may not necessarily mean “it is”.

And when that happens, and my bones are laid to rest, my epitaph with probably read: “He fought for the apostrophe’s”.

Tip o’ the Hat to Stephen Fry who Tweeted the link.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I have been known to take a red pen into supermarkets for furtive corrections.

Roger Owen Green said...

I so total'ly under'stand where youre comin'g from.

Arthur Schenck said...

Louise: You're even more "guerilla" than I am—I like that! :-)

Roger: I'm sure that, sadly, there are people who'd read that and think it was all correct. Sigh…

d said...

I'm certain there is a website dedicated to this kind of thing...I'll look for it! I know I have it bookmarked somewhere.

I just don't understand most of the mistakes. Why would anyone ever write "mango's"?! I know that its and it's can be confusing, but mango's?