Contractions: can't we all agree the apostrophe needs to be retired? [Edited]

[Antinor01]

@cochrane

Neither does Lieutenant Commander Data.

Except when he does. But we don’…I mean do not talk about that.

[Trepa_Mayfield]

@jtur88

If the apostrophe is going to be used as a standard and mandatory orthographic “letter” in the English alphabet, they could have at least put it with all the the other letters on they keyboard, instead of making touch typists stop and look for its currently fashionable position. When I learned typing, it was Shift-8. And it wasnt even an apostrophe then, it was a dual purpose right and left single quotation mark.

I quit using them a long time ago, unless my writing needed to be recognized as formal by pedants. If I write shouldnt or dont and you have no idea what Im talking about, youre not going to understand anything else I say, either.

It’s been on the right of the semicolon for a long time now. Just sayin’.

@Skald_the_Rhymer

[pedantic jackhole]

You mean hyphen, not dash. Dashes are used to set off parenthetical statements with more force than a pair of commas but with less force than parentheses; hyphens join words.

And I find hyphens quite useful, both for neologisms and for avoiding ambiguity.

[/pedantic jackhole]

God, hyphens are a pain in the ass. Whether or not a word/phrase is compound, hyphenated or two separate words is utterly unpredictable. Drives me insane.

[DrCube]

When you take redundancy out of language, it’s called “encrypted”. Please don’t think “we can do without it” is a valid argument for throwing away something we took centuries to perfect. Your job as a writer is to convey meaning clearly, not to make the reader work at decrypting your code. Redundancy is the reason we can sight read. Apostrophes, capital letters, and punctuation, among other things, is how you can glance at a message and understand it without having to deliberate over the intended meaning. I’m not saying English is done evolving, just that “it isn’t really necessary” is a terrible argument for your proposed changes.

[DChord568]

@jtur88

If the apostrophe is going to be used as a standard and mandatory orthographic “letter” in the English alphabet, they could have at least put it with all the the other letters on they keyboard, instead of making touch typists stop and look for its currently fashionable position. When I learned typing, it was Shift-8. And it wasnt even an apostrophe then, it was a dual purpose right and left single quotation mark.

@Trepa_Mayfield

It’s been on the right of the semicolon for a long time now. Just sayin’.

Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how holding down the Shift key and stretching two rows above the home keys was preferable to moving your pinkie one key over from its home position.

I’ve never known the apostrophe to be located anywhere other than these two places.

[kayaker]

@aceplace57

I suspect the apostrophe will reign supreme for quite sometime to come.

If anythin’g, I’d like to see their us’e incre’ased. Them Spanish upside down question marks are cool a’s we’ll. ¿¿¿

[whitetho]

Can we agree that we can start writing o’clock as oclock? When was the last time you saw a person write out the full “of the clock”? And why do not we write it as al’ways?

[Bridget_Burke]

The OP may write (or type) as he likes. But forget about that “we” stuff…

[kaylasdad99]

The notion of retiring the apostrophe is a crackpot idea. Even worse is the notion of semi-retiring the apostrophe. first how would such a change be implemented? Next, taking the apostrophe out of only some contractions would confuse the hell out of new readers. And new writers.

[Acsenray]

How is possession a more important role for an apostrophe as opposed to contraction, especially considering that originally, English, like German, used no apostrophe for possession.

[Patty_O_Furniture]

I’d like to step in as self-appointed change manager and ask the OP to justify this change using the seven R’s of change evaluation:

1. Who RAISED the Change?
2. What is the REASON for the change?
3. What RETURN will the change deliver?
4. What RISKS are there if we do or do not carry out the change?
5. What RESOURCES will be required to perform this change?
6. Who is RESPONSIBLE for this change being performed?
7. What RELATIONSHIPS are there between this and other changes?

Frankly, I’m just not seeing a business case here.

[Inner_Stickler]

@kaylasdad99

The notion of retiring the apostrophe is a crackpot idea. Even worse is the notion of semi-retiring the apostrophe. first how would such a change be implemented? Next, taking the apostrophe out of only some contractions would confuse the hell out of new readers. And new writers.

The only realistic path I see is for people to drop apostrophes in informal writing, such as facebook posts and emails and then slowly have the lack of apostrophes creep into fringe formal writing. Eventually, if it can become standard in formal writing, the styleguides will eliminate their requirement and english could be said to no longer require apostrophes for contractions. I wouldn’t imagine this process to take any less than a few generations though. We’d have to wait for all the Chicken Littles to die off. German was able to consciously revamp their orthographical system so we know that it’s possible.

[kaylasdad99]

Ehh.

Maybe in the amount of time it takes for “ask” to migrate into “axe.” (c.f., Futurama)

[wonky]

@Acsenray

How is possession a more important role for an apostrophe as opposed to contraction, especially considering that originally, English, like German, used no apostrophe for possession.

It isn’t. The apostrophe can aid comprehension, though only when used “correctly.” Considering how many people use them at what seems like random, you can’t trust an apostrophe (at least in casual writing), so there’s no real benefit to their use.

[Ranger_Jeff]

@whitetho

Can we agree that we can start writing o’clock as oclock? When was the last time you saw a person write out the full “of the clock”? And why do not we write it as al’ways?

I get by by calling and writing 2 o’clock as either 0200 or 1400. It also bypasses the noon and midnight am/pm misunderstanding.

[Drunky_Smurf]

But there is no 1400. The clock stops at 1200.

[Ranger_Jeff]

@Drunky_Smurf

But there is no 1400. The clock stops at 1200.

I’d be amused to hear you submit your argument to a Drill Instructor. :rolleyes:

[DingoelGringo]

@DrDeth

Ah, so Shakespeare had poor intelligence since his spelling was terrible?:rolleyes:

And some of us use some deliberate “error” as we want the language to change for the better. For example, I dont like apostrophes much, I think “tho” is better than “though” and “an” is stupid, just use “a”.

But grammar nazi’s refuse to let the language evolve.

I have half a dozen pets of my own such as enuff and arrove. I once had a college professor of English who said we have not just a right, but an obligation to push English to evolve in the manner we want it to go. He made the claim that it was from his efforts that catalogue changed into catalog. My spell check doesn’t even recognize catalogue, and maybe some youngsters here won’t either, but back in the 1950’s catalog would have been rejected.

[Little_Pig]

@Inner_Stickler

You mean contractions, not conjunctions.

[DingoelGringo]

@LC_Strawhouse

I dare you to go to Ireland and tell every O’Brien and O’Neill you meet that their name is getting retired.

I knew a gal who came to the USA from Colombia. Her last name had a ~ on top of an n and when immigration tyipsts didn’t put it there she was miffed. We don’t have it in English I explained to her. Malian~o was her last name and changed to Maliano could mean bad ass. I recommended she change it to Malianyo, but she didn’t like that either.

[DChord568]

@DingoelGringo

I have half a dozen pets of my own such as enuff and arrove. I once had a college professor of English who said we have not just a right, but an obligation to push English to evolve in the manner we want it to go. He made the claim that it was from his efforts that catalogue changed into catalog. My spell check doesn’t even recognize catalogue, and maybe some youngsters here won’t either, but back in the 1950’s catalog would have been rejected.

Can we agree that any changes in language ought to move toward clarity and away from potential confusion?

There’s a rather large degree of difference between catalogue/catalog and he’ll/hell.