I used to include the apostrophe, because I read a style guide recommending it, but probably 20 years ago I decided to go without as I figured it looked fine. If digits were not upper case sized against the lower case ‘s’ I might think differently, but the size difference helps make it work.
I wonder how many people who dislike the modern use of ‘literally’ (to mean something other than literally), are OK with answering ‘absolutely!’ when they really just mean ‘I agree’ (rather than ‘I agree to the greatest possible extreme’)
Doesn’t the apostrophe before the s, mark a possessive? You could write the 50’s wild parties, but the '50s to name the decade.
I ask to learn. English is a second language to me.
English is a second language to me too, but I remember we can use 's to indicate plural sometimes, such as “the three R’s.”
However, I’m curious about saying something like “X did used to do this” (an instance of which I saw in this thread). Shouldn’t it be “use” instead of “used” (I wonder)?
If I were to write that sentence, I would either lose “did” or “used to do”.
I’d be content with promoting a better understanding of when “literally” is and is not an appropriate intensifier. It can be appropriate as a metaphorical intensifier, but not everything is a metaphor.
The rules for using apostrophes are pretty simple. They’re used to indicate possession (“Mary’s pencil”) and they’re used to indicate contractions.("can’t, won’t, etc.). They shouldn’t be used for plurals except when absolutely necessary to avoid confusion (“there are three s’s in that word”) but it’s preferable to just revise the statement so it isn’t necessary (“the letter ‘s’ occurs three times in that word”).
The possession and contraction rule seems to cause interminable confusion with respect to “it’s”. It seems reasonable to say “the dog wagged it’s tail” because, after all, the tail belongs to the dog. But that’s just wrong because “it’s” is not a possessive form of “it”, it’s a contraction that means “it is”. The possessive form is “its” with no apostrophe. I find the misuse extremely annoying because reading something that essentially says “the dog wagged it is tail” is just jarring.
The difference between a descriptivist and a prescriptivist, generally speaking, is that a descriptivist observes (i.e.- “describes”) language as it is, while a prescriptivist strives for order and consistency. They’re often perceived as opposing views, but they aren’t actually in opposition at all. They’re just two entirely different approaches to language with entirely different compatible goals. A linguist who studies language and writes with eloquence and grammatical correctness is simultaneously both a descriptivist and a follower of rules.
Well, color me gobsmacked and my ignorance corrected. I never woulda dreamt “50’s” was considered permissible. I had always assumed as wolfpup:
BTW, I originally put this in ATMB because I feared it might be considered junior-modding, or run afoul of the “don’t be a jerk” rule.
Stupid sentiment ahead - in my ignorance as to the incorrectness of the plural apostrrophe, and in light of my general feeling of helplessness in the face of so much ugliness all around, I actually thought we could accomplish one teeny bit of improvement by informing our community as to this one usage. “This starfish” and all. But, alas, my underlying premise was incorrect. 
Now you’ve got me curious. With all the abbreviations and slang around, what is it about my grammar that you find annoying? (Doesn’t surprise me that anyone would find my posts annoying - just that it would be the GRAMMAR that had that effect.)
And, praytell, who is the lone other lucky poster who draws your ire?
Funny - I tend to be a bit of a grammar/spelling nut in most of my life. But I can’t think of a single poster whom I think, “Oh - THAT’S the guy whose grammar I dislike!”
@wolfpup covered the normal uses of apostrophe in written English pretty thoroughly.
But the backstory on decades specifically is that it was a standard pushed by various style guides to use e.g. 50’s for the specific situation of pluralizing a string of digits.
As the influence of style guides has waned with the advent of the www and lots more amateur writers getting published (like us here), the apostrophe exception when pluralizing strings of digits is fading from use.
This very thread is about people who don’t know it was ever a sorta-standard contending with people who do know, contending with people who think it’s an obsolete standard best abandoned contending with those thinking it’s a standard worth upholding.
The contraction of ‘is’ (and sometimes ‘has’ and in some dialects maybe ‘was’) to 's is a really common one that people seem to overlook when talking about apostrophes so it’s nice to see you mention it explicitly - I think it falls between two stools, because people tend to think of contractions as being anything that isn’t apostrophe+s, and any instances of apostrophe+s as either possessives or mistakes - but “The cat’s in the cradle” contains a contraction, not a plural.
If I said “Absolutely” in such a context, I would mean that I agree completely and totally, as opposed to partially or conditionally or with reservations. How is that not the standard meaning of the word?
More specifically, they’re used to indicate where something has been left out. My understanding is that that’s how they came to be used to indicate possessives: way back a long time ago, possessives were indicated with an “-es” ending, but then the apostrophe replaced the e.
Yes, I think over time you can see a trend towards eliminatign/cleaning up punctuation marks where possible. For example, note how YMCA was rendered as Y.M.C.A. with all the glorious periods in the past. Also note how when you open up an old book, you see commas used much more often in setting off clauses than you do now. Today you might not use the comma after a short introductory element or clause, but go back a century or so and you’ll see them set off everywhere. We’ve been moving slowly towards “open” punctuation vs “closed punctuation.” Other examples include not using the period after abbreviations, particularly titles. If you read a British paper, you will likely see Mr Brown rather than Mr. Brown. Associated Press style had a hyphen in teen-ager until their edition c. 2000. British styles go one further, eschewing traditional acronym typography such that NATO becomes Nato.
I suppose the point is that these things change and the trend of change is towards reducing visual clutter while no sacrificing comprehension, but also that there are also competing norms and when and where you grew up may dictate what norm you follow.
How is that different from just agreeing? If no reservations are stated, they can be assumed, but also I don’t think most people are really thinking about the precise meaning of their words as you say you are.
I suspect people are thinking of the meaning, and using different words of agreement to express their enthusiasm with agreeing. For example:
Should we get a pizza?
- I guess
- Sure
- Yes
- Absolutely
- Absofuckinglutely
It’s still using the word in a way that is entirely compatible with its “precise meaning,” as opposed to diametrically opposed to its precise meaning.
Agreed, with the addition that not using the bogus apostrophe reduces opportunity for misunderstanding, so my rule is Just Don’t. It’s like the Oxford/serial comma: it never adds confusion and often reduces it, so why wouldn’t you use it? Never understood people who argue this.
I use the serial comma, much against the AP style I was taught and used professionally. That said, there is one example of where omitting the serial comma reduces ambiguity, but I don’t remember it offhand and would have to dig a little. It’s an outlier, though.
That’s the way I do it: The '50s.
This is what I mean though - in this list, ‘absolutely’ isn’t really absolute. I think what people often mean when they say ‘absolutely’ is really ‘emphatically’.
I didn’t say it was opposite, just that I suspect it’s often used loosely.