whilewereatitwhydontweeliminatespacesandmixedcaseletters?
otherwritingsystemsdoperfectlywellwithneither,sowhyshouldweusethem?
People are left grasping for ways a missing apostrophe could be misleading. But so many people (and this board is full of them) can spy (and point out) missing apostrophes with ease. If their absence were truly confusing, we wouldn’t be able to spot their absence so easily.
So, they help a reader identify people who are of a high enough level of education and conscientiousness that they are One of Us. I think that’s the only reason they are still used.
One quixotic quest at a time.
Well, that and their usage is correct. That may be a factor as well.
English is riddled with things we only do because they’re correct. For an example, that’s the only reason I didn’t write the previous sentence “Inglish is ridled with things we onli do becuz theyr corect”. If we’re going to sack apostrophes, what reason have we for keeping, well, half of the rest of the language rules?
- edited by me for fun only
I invite you to look up the history of the apostrophe. Then we can talk about what makes things “correct,” I guess. If we must. I doubt you will be happy with my position on that.
I agree that far too many people think knowing how to use the apostrophe correctly is an acceptable substitute for having something worthwhile to say. I disagree that it should be, therefore, eliminated. Let those of us who know how to use it correctly do so and those who don’t may do as they please and both groups turn their disfavor on the unintelligentsia who think they are doing the rest of us a service by pointing out what those who care already know.
No it wouldnt.
Don’t. Even for fun. Thanks.
The fact that the history of it is stupid (which I’m presuming it is) means nothing; the history of all English spelling and writing is stupid.
Plus, this seems like a really weird hill to die on. If I were going to attack a stupid example of english language law, I’d go after that moronic rule that quote marks absorb the punctuation around them (as in your “correct,”, up there). Now that rule changes meaning! And as a writer I hate it so, so much. I will restructure sentences to avoid running up against the most egregious infractions it causes, and if I’m quoting something written I just say fuck it and break the rule with deliberate intent.
But nobody is wasting my time making rude “you mean ‘correct,’ lol” posts and they definitely do that for misplaced apostrophes.
Why does it mean nothing? If the history of all English spelling and writing is stupid, why are you identifying one portion of said history and labeling it correct?
Habit from being a computer programmer, mostly. You can’t fix everything - takes to long. Target the stuff that causes damage, and leave everything else as untouched as possible because messing around with things causes confusion and additional problems.
Putting aside the issue of whether sticklers get heckled for not being sticklers about their apostrophe usage, the apostrophe doesn’t jack things up when it’s used correctly. Some things about the english language don’t work right even when they are right, and I can’t see any sense in fixing the inconsequential quirks over the truly broken stuff.
Please explain what benefit you see from this. You did not clearly state your case in your OP. You did admit that removing the apostrophe would result in net ambiguity. Why do it?
No, I think it would permit some forms of ambiguity and eliminate others.
It would also remove a barrier that serves exceptionally little purpose other than as a weapon against people who are less adept at or less conscientious about minor punctuation traditions. And, though minor, it wastes time writing, editing, etc. I do a lot of both and it adds up.
Despite my commentary, I have no interest in preventing anyone from using apostrophes up one side and down another. I just think it should be relegated to the educational trash heap for future students (along with rules against splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions). We can make the language slightly easier and, in my opinion, lose a vanishingly small amount of certainty. Fluent readers and writers would quickly adapt (or choose not to) and less fluent readers and writers would benefit.
(And the greengrocer’s apostrophe would disappear, eventually. That’s got to be worth something, even for people who lurves them some apostrophes.)
If there is a problem with the use of the apostrophe in the English language it is that it is used for multiple purposes and somewhat inconsistently; for instance, it indicates possession in the third person specific (“The stolen money is in Bob’s van”) but not first or second person (“mine”, “yours”, “hers”) or their person generic (“theirs”, “its”), while it is used for contraction (“it’s” for “it is”) in a fashion that is often confused with pluralization or possession. Rather than eliminating the apostrophe completely, it would make more sense to retain it for contraction, which is common in not only English but many other Romance and Germanic languages while establishing a new and clearer convention for possession that includes gender neutral pronouns, which also cause problems when referring to mixed gender groups or generic persons.
It would not address the problem of people mangling grammar and vocabulary through ignorance and carelessness, and particularly the misuse of the comma, ellipsis, semicolon, hyphen/em-dash/en-dash, and of course, confusion with homonyms, which even trips me up occasionally when I’m typing fast and not carefully copyediting my own work, and notwithstanding confusion variance in pronunciation not only between words of different origins but in regional or national variations. Modern English is a very complex language owing to its heritage, but it also offers a lot of nuance for the educated reader or speaker, and most of the inconsistencies still follow some kind of rule, which is more than can be said for Russian and other East Slavic languages, which are just a hobo stew of different rules, inflections, and loanwords, and the vast differences between the literate Russian taught in classrooms and the colloquial ‘kitchen sink’ Russian spoken in normal usage.
Stranger
Didn’t they already do this in England?
Here;s an ideas. Just replace the apostrophe with the semicolon, which occupies the position on the qwertry keyboard where the apostrophe would naturally belong if Mr. Qwerty were not such a dope. When I learned to touch type 63 years ago, I could not for the life of me fathom why it was necessary to use the shift key and reach for another row of keys (where the * is now) for such a common symbol. From that day to this, I doubt if I have ever typed a single semicolon. I;d be perfectly happy to use the thing if I could reach it.
I doubt it adds up to anything close to what it would take to eliminate all those apostrophes. Do you realize how many are out there?
Somebody would have to cite Lynne Truss eventually – it may as well be me. As one might expect, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves she is a keen defender of the – correctly used – apostrophe; but though she is usually merciless about any botching of punctuation, she admits to having something of a soft spot for the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” (signs for plural “Potato’s”, “Banana’s”, etc.) – remarking affectionately but a bit condescendingly, “because greengrocers are self-evidently horny-thumbed people who do not live by words”.
Truss is also among those who opine that eliminating the apostrophe would be more easily said than done. She writes: “The next day after the elimination of the apostrophe, imagine the scene. Triumphant abolitionist sits down to write, ‘Goodbye to the Apostrophe: we’re not missing you a bit !’ and finds that he can’t. Abolish the apostrophe and it will be necessary, before the hour is up, to reinvent it.”