Sung to the tune of Wagner’s Bridal Chorus, I gather?
That one just makes me smile, because it reminds me of my mom. she would frequently sign cards (birthday, Christmas, etc.)
“Love”, Mom or Love, “Mom”
We’d always wonder who this “Mom” person really was, and whether or not she actually “loved” us… 
Here comes an S…
Oh, what a mess!
Even my iPhone wants to get in on the act. Every time I want to type the word “members,” as in more than one member, the auto-correct wants to substitute the possessive, “member’s.” I have to consciously override the possessive meaning if I want to use the plural. Why can’t it just leave the plural alone and let me type in the apostrophe if I want it to be possessive? It doesn’t do this with any other plural ending in “s.”
For some reason, a lot of people itch to tag apostro-plurals onto words that end in a vowel.
So we have pea’s, carrots, tomato’s and potato’s. Video’s and televisions. Menu’s with pizza’s and other foods.
Oh dear LORD why do people do this oh WHY WHY WHY? Recently, and in the span of the same week, we got two phone calls from unconnected people, both of whom were following up on our number on their phones’ displays, from calls that we had made to them up to two weeks previously. The one lady chirped that she just wanted to make sure it wasn’t something important. Well, see, clearly we already had your number, so if it had been important, the way you would have known is that we would have CALLED YOUR SORRY ASS BACK YOU IDIOT. Grrrrrrrr …
And absolutely, the rule about forming plurals was taught WAY too early in school for people to be vague about it. It’s just so freaking basic! I look way, way down my nose at people who form incorrect plurals.
All my fellow pedants – you do realize that Gaudere is going to have her wicked way with our next few posts, right?
Gah, so many overwhelming emotions in this thread!
I have confessed in the past to subconsciously proof reading love letters. I automatically proof read damn near everything that passes in front of my eyes. Bad spelling makes me puke. Wrong homonyms give me hives. And that damned apostrophe-s syndrome should make people eligible for the death penalty.
I get the screaming meemies from the eternal its/it’s misuse, too.
I suspect the apostrophe-s business began when people decided to make cutsie labels for their homes. They wanted the world to know that the entire Whoozit family lived in a certain house.
Either Mister or Missus Whoozit said that since more than one Whoozit lived there, the sign should indicate that fact.
And then one or the other said, “Shouldn’t there be some indication of possessive?”
I made that last question up. I’m sure it was more along the lines of, “I seem to remember something from second grade about an apostrophe.”
And thus was born the mess of “The Whoozit’s live here.”
My proof-reading hackles have gone into full-alert mode. I start thinking, “How many Whoozits live there? More than one? Get rid of the damned apostrophe. Only one Whoozit? Fix the verb, dammit!”
Damn, it’s not even noon, and I need a Xanax.
~VOW
That was one of my criteria when I was doing the online dating thing - a guy who sent me an email full of spelling and grammatical errors was crossed off the list on that basis. My husband has a degree in English - I get a certain perverse pleasure from correcting his (occasional) errors.
(For the record, his emails to me were impeccable.)
Quotation marks really throw some people. I’ve seen sentences like this:
“How do quotation marks work,”? he wondered.
Or even this:
“How could anyone possibly think this looked right,” we asked?
The whole point of this thread is to keep her distracted so she doesn’t get a load of the one over in MPSIMS, where we’re – never mind, I’ve said too much already.
Looks like the work of Jim Theis.
I hate it. I see school websites and teacher training manuals with that error (and more) ALL OF THE TIME. It makes me cringe and I want to punch them in all in their faces.
And you wonder if our children is learning! 
It jars me completely out of what I am reading. If I see a plural formed with 's, I’m likely to just stop reading whatever it is, because I can’t trust anything written by someone who would make such an egregious error.
Helpful guidelines for the easily confused:[ul][li]Bob the Angry Flower[*]The Oatmeal[/ul][/li]
For the similarly confusing (and upsetting) “alot”, I point interested readers to Hyperbole and a Half.
I said ‘somewhat’ because I don’t mind seeing it (and tend to do it) with numbers, acronyms, even proper nouns…in those cases the white space adds a bit of clarity, IMO. Grates on my nerves with regular non-proper nouns though. The it’s/its confusion is at least as bad, if not worse.
It bothers me because it is wrong, except that in some cases, it’s for convenience, and then it doesn’t bother me so much (“do’s and don’ts”).
Yes, it drives me crazy. And yes, it makes me feel less of the writer.
And then there’s the evil “it’s” as a possessive.
GRRRRRRRR.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but one time in Pokhara, Nepal, the wife and I were strolling down the lakefront, which is lined with restaurants, one of which had a chalkboard sign outside that read at the top: “Western breakfast’s.” and there was a little old Englishwoman – resembled Margaret Rutherford, only somewhat smaller – berating some poor, sheepish waiter and making him remove the apostrophe from the sign. 
Ye, me rited good in teh old day’s.
It drives me nuts. I teach, and I constantly point out that the apostrophe changes the meaning. In written English, it denotes possession (1960s is the decade we otherwise call the sixties- note the absence of the apostrophe, whereas 1960’s refers to something that belongs in 1960: 1960’s election (which I would NEVER write- I’d use ‘the election of 1960’ but my brain is a little pokey (been doing a BUNCH of grading of esssays, sorry))
My last name ends with “s” and my Grandmother of the same name was an English teacher. I knew from first grade on how to use an apostrophe to create possessives and plurals.
FYI: in pretty much every class I teach, I have to have the s makes it pluarl, ‘s makes it possessive and s’ makes it plural possessive (unless it already ends in s- like my last name) conversation. It is such a simple and USEFUL rule, why it is so often broken, is beyond me…
Drives me absolutely batshit crazy. As a librarian I see bazillions of people writing things in the evident belief that an apostraphe means “here comes an ‘s’!”