Argument for ditching the apostrophe to mark the possessive:
History: -‘s only became common in the late 1600s, and the plural -s’ only in the late 1800s (source: Chris Barber, Early Modern English).
Common usage: apostrophe usage is becoming less common, and correct apostrophe usage rather rare, especially for the plural. Things like “Teachers Union” are now accepted as standard.
Common usage #2: Texting, email, and other electronic forms provide venues where less formal writing is accepted, and no apostrophes is one of the features of such writing.
Internal consistency: Personal pronouns do not use the apostrophe, even though it’s etymologically the same old genitive [s]. We do not use punctuation to mark other grammatical features.
It marks a distinction which does not exist in speech: cows, cow’s, and cows’ all sound exactly the same.
Cognate languages (e.g. German) with genitive -s don’t use apostrophes with it.
Argument for keeping the apostrophe:
It provides a useful distinction that makes written English clearer.
The full system has been around for about 200 years, which is enough history to let it stand.
It’s just not that hard: I mastered it by the age of 8.
It distinguishes the readers and the truly educated from the unwashed masses.
So, help me out here. I’d rather keep it, but I think the arguments for ditching it (altogether, not some sort of half-assed “I’ll use it randomly in my papers or make plurals with it”) are stronger. Yet I love the apostrophe, used correctly. If only English had a regulatory body, and I were running it.
Note that I’d rather avoid the prescriptivist / descriptivist argument, even though some of it is probably inevitable. I just fear that in 500 years, apostrophe -s will be a historical quirk of 19th- and 20th-century, like capitalizing all the nouns was in the 18th century. What do you think? What would you do, if you had the power, and why?
That says to me “a union of teachers,” why would it need an apostrophe?
Personally, the older I get, and the more I learn about language, the more I think we should either make official rules for English like French and Spanish have, or people should just STFU about spelling and grammar and accept that we have an common use language and if you understand what someone meant, they are correct.
Change “teacher” to “child,” where the distinction in forms doesn’t rely on spelling conventions. Would you say “a children union” (subject case) or a “children’s union” (possessive case)? Or “women union” vs. “women’s union,” etc. Why would “teacher” be grammatically different from “child” or “woman” in this situation?
I’ve heard people justify the lack of apostrophe by expaining that it’s only used for actual ownership, and the teachers don’t own the union. That may, indeed, be the rule as applied nowadays, but it’s not historical usage. Historically, it’s the old genitive case, which is used for all sorts of relations including partitive, possessive, temporal (a cup’s worth of yeast in a week’s time is a baker’s friend).
I like monkey test’s. If you cant master the use’s of apostrophes’s by the ages’ of eight or ten, then you wo’nt be able to do lot’s of other kinds’ of seriou’s thinking, either, which tell’s the res’t of u’s how s’mart you really are.
Proper apostrophe use is a sign of a certain type of language: the precise language necessary in (largely) academic and professional settings. Learning it should be required, even if I think it’s incredibly elitist and arrogant to automatically assume that someone who hasn’t mastered the skill is stupid or part of the “unwashed masses.” I say that it should be taught because, like many things taught in school, like large sections of the math curriculum, it will be useful to many, but not all, students who pass through the system. I know that outside of casual interest, I will probably never use my knowledge of the bony and cartilagenous fishes, or my knowledge of matrices; however, I don’t think it was unfair to test me on them.
All that said, there’s lots of humour to be had at inadvertent changes of meaning from incorrect use of punctuation or spelling. But it’s only funny if the new meaning is humourous in itself (“Lonely Adult’s Club”), not just if one wants to laugh at the person making the mistake.
If you are a teacher, stay with the traditional usage until the textbook that you are assigned shows a choice or a change. Then embrace the change, pointing it out to your students as being a normal part of the progression of the language.
Perhaps with this one exception:
Do not accept this spelling of “alright.”
(Rage, rage against the dying of the light!)
You aren’t comparing like-for-like. “Teachers” is plural, “women’s” is possessive. “Teachers Union” makes sense whether apostrophised or not, but the apostrophe changes the sense of the phrase (IMO), whereas “Women Union” doesn’t make sense and requires the “'s”.
Which state has it’s act together the most?
Poster’s names which go great together!
Lets look to the future: What is the next great civil rights movment in America?
American’s are too dumb for an Obama presidency.
FWIW, “correct” apostrophe usage seems to have made noteable shift just in the past several decades. In grade school (in the 1960s) I was taught that to make words ending in s, z and x possesive you added an apostrophe only (not apostrophe+s). These days you hardly ever see that construction, even in the published text you find in newspapers, magazines and books; it’s overwhelmingly apostrophe+s.
(Frankly, I like the old way better, but I’m slowly turning into a grumpy old man, and grumpy old men always like things the way they used to be.)
Here is my take on the question. First, it is so heavily abused as to lose any force. As pointed out, the genitive “s” in other Germanic languages is not marked by an apostrophe (although there is, or at least used to be, a restaurant in Zuerich called Kaiser’s Reblaube (grape arbor)). This is not an entirely convincing argument; cross-language arguments rarely are, although the structures in this case are cognate. No, my main argument for dropping the possessive apostrophe is that it should be reserved for omitted letter(s), as in contractions can’t, don’t, it’s, etc. and not for what is, after all, nothing but a case ending. I guess it was put in to disambiguate the “s”. (Minor hijack: English has kept only four inflections and three of them consist in adding an “s”.)
I would make one exception. The 's is sometimes added to a noun phrase, rather than a noun and it might be useful to keep the apostrophe for that case. It would disambiguate the following well-known example:
The son of the pharaoh’s daughter is the daughter of the pharaohs son.
Note that in speech there would be a slight pause before the first “s” and not in the second.
That was the whole point of the example. I’ll rephrase my point below, but could you explain why “teachers union,” no apostrophe, makes sense?
Hypothesis: “Teachers union” requires an apostrophe.
Proof: Check other plural nouns + union, meaning “union of [plural noun],” where the plural possessive and the plural subject cases are not the same, in order not to be misled by common usage errors.
Evidence: Children union, men union, women union, etc. all look and sound wrong, while children’s union, men’s union, women’s union, etc., all look and sound right. [To be fair, “mice union” sounds okay, and “mice’s union” weird.]
Conclusion: “Teachers’ union” requires an apostrophe.
I may be wrong about this, but it would be great if someone could demonstrate why.
What is the consensus on adding an ‘s or just the ’ after a name or other singular noun ending in s? I was taught that the rule is just add an ’ after the word, as in "This is Charles’ book" or “the dress’ hem.” But I’m also seeing cites saying that both are correct or that you should add 's to then end of names, as in “James’s book.” Other places say if you pronounce the extra syllable, add the 's, but if you don’t, then don’t. Or that it’s correct either way, but you must be consistent.
I’ve been teaching my students to just add ’ after the s, because trying to get them to figure out if they pronounce the extra syllable or not is going to lead to inconsistent punctuation on their part, and it’s easier to tell them not to add the extra s before the '. However, I also want to teach them what’s most correct. Thoughts?
I don’t like that rule, because it doesn’t take into account the sound of the final S. In words where the S is pronounced like a Z, such as series, no, you don’t add another S in speech so it makes sense to add just an apostrophe in writing. But when the final S is pronounced like an S, such as in lotus, you do add another S in speech (pronounced like a Z), so it makes sense to add apostrophe + S for the possessive lotus’s.
[ETA] guess I should have read the previous post… “the dress’ hem” is just confusing, and looks wrong to me.
I agree that it looks weird and defies pronunciation. However, when trying to teach kids, you want to give them the most consistent rule. If the rule is, words ending in s already just get a ’ after them, they have something they can apply across the board. If it’s considered correct, then it works. I hestitate to muddy the waters by asking them to figure out which words they pronounce the extra s in and which they don’t. But if it’s considered more correct, I will try to incorporate that into my lesson next year. Is there any sort of consensus here? Did I miss the memo from the Apostrophe Society? How can I get on their mailing list?
“Teachers” is serving as an adjective describing the type of union. This is the logic behind the Reuters style manual (to name but one) prescribing “writers strike” rather than “writer’s strike”, as far as I’m aware (although other manuals, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, disagree).