superkentclark: Actually I’m referring to the habit some people have (not just here, but everywhere!) of ADDING the apostrophe when they don’t need it. Example: “The cat is washing it’s face.” Wrong. The possessive of “it” does not have the apostrophe; that punctuation is reserved for the contraction of “it is.” A simple rule.
I share your (not “you’re”) annoyance with the basic disconnect a lot of people have with apostrophes. I fully appreciate that the typo gremlin attacks us all, but very often I see the same mistake several times in one piece of writing, so I know the writer has simply not mastered that.
Such things always leave me with a little less respect for the writer, which is unfortunate. My reasoning is that these things are EASY. If a person can’t pay attention to these easy little details, how likely is it that he did the hard things right?
My grandmother’s response to that is usually “Who are you trying to reach?” Most people quit opening phone calls with the “Who’s this” line pretty quickly.
My new boyfriend has four vocal habits of which I will break him. I ascending order of annoyance:
He over-uses the adjective “interesting” and uses it to cover when he has nothing in particular to say.
He says “for some unapparent reason” instead of “for no apparent reason” or just “for some reason.”
He says “and that’s French for” to jokingly restate something I said.
And the worst is that he constantly speaks for my cats and insists that they refer to me as “daddy.” He does this with his own cat as well and since it’s his cat I wouldn’t say anything but I find it screamingly irritating for him to put me (or other humans) in this parental role.
It’s only been a couple of weeks so I haven’t had the time to really work him over, but I will break him. He will be broken!
