I don’t read sporting news (how much longer are the NBA playoffs, anyway? They’ve been going on for, like, a YEAR, it seems!), so I can’t speak to that. But it’s true in many other venues.
Well, technically, that’s how long they last (a whole season anyway).
Why apostrophes matter.
Lesson One:
Those old things in the cellar are all my ex-husband’s.
Those old things in the cellar are all my ex-husbands.
I’m starting to think my idea isn’t such a good one…
Ah, but starting a thread that allows Dopers to geek out on grammar was definitely a good idea.
Bravo!
So has society gotten to the point at which we abolish everything that we learned after the age of seven . . . only because some people stopped learning by that age?
spacescapitallettersperiodsandcolonsshouldbenext;onlythesemicolonshouldremain
Thank you.
I can’t talk about this objectively because I’m an English professor and writer, and for many years I was an editor. However, I’m afraid we may be on our way to losing the apostrophe (though not the comma). My students rarely use apostrophes, and when they do, they don’t use them correctly. They will use an apostrophe for a plural instead of a possessive, and they avoid using them for contractions as well.
The comma, though? No way. That will be around for a long, long time.
The NBA playoffs finish up the the same time as the Stanley Cup - mid-August. Then they start pre-season.
Glad y’all liked it - it was a fun one to write!
Okay - that threw me for a loop. Coming off the heels of Musicat’s link to “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” I thought you were Lynne Truss!
I’m laughing at all of this “we’re losing the apostrophe” business.
I could gather plenty of real-life examples if I weren’t at work right now, but these made-up ones are quite typical:
**Large Ice Cream Cone’s: $2.25
New and Used Car’s
Dancer’s 7 nights a week**
Not to mention the rampant use — right here on SDMB — of “it’s” for the possessive “its.”
Woman: without her, man is nothing.
Woman, without her man, is nothing.
Are these apostrophe’s migrating to the wrong place’s on their own…
That was the most interesting thing I read that day. 
My wife and I were laughing at a car dealer’s ad in the paper over the weekend because of excessive use of apostrophes.
Chevy’s! Hyundai’s! Toyota’s!
The whole ad was like that. When a business can’t even be bothered to spell-and-grammar-check their ads, there’s not much chance of them getting my business.
Ugh. People seem to be under two incorrect assumptions:
- All proper nouns need an apostrophe when making a plural.
- Words ending in a vowel need an apostrophe when making a plural.
It drives me crazy. And it doesn’t make a lick of sense. I blame the people who defend using apostrophes to pluralize an acronym or abbreviation (not wrong per se, it’s just an alternate way of doing it that ends up confusing further uses of the apostrophe).
IINM, pluralizing an acronym, abbreviation or date by using an apostrophe was not just “an alternate way,” but standard practice until relatively recently (e.g., ICBM’s, CD’s, the 1960’s).
Anyone know when the AP Stylebook, et al, started recommending that the apostrophe not be used?
I agree that it led to confusion, and that CDs is more elegant than CD’s.