I know, I know, apostrophe misuse is a tired old gripe, but I have noticed a new aspect of it, committed even by those who are otherwise au fait with correct usage.
Why do people have a mental block when it comes to words that end in vowels? People who would never dream of writing “potato chip’s” will still write “pizza’s”, “potato’s”, “zucchini’s”, “video’s” etc.
Do the rule of grammar change when we encounter a vowel? No they do no’t.
And, worse, a colleague informs me that he has heard from a friend who is involved in secondary education that plans are afoot to scrap the teaching of apostrophes altogether, because it’s all too difficult for the poor little cherubs - sorry, cherub’s - to understand at all.
I think that people who commit this decapitation-worthy infraction are afraid that the meaning and pronunciation will be lost on the reader because the final vowel might be modified in the reader’s head. Understandable. But still a treason-like crime in 32 state’s.
I did post this one once before but it has been a while. I now present to you a first hand account of the worst apostrophe error in the history of mankind. A man named Charles called in sick to one of his co-workers and she sent the following email to the entire company:
I’m beginning to think this is the flip side of not ending sentences with a preposition. That foolish rule, on that Fowler made up out of his own head, is very easy to remember, so people love it. They cling to it… while not bothering to learn basic vocab.
I worry that people have decided that because they can’t handle many of the minor rules in the semi-literate day and age, they’ll make a preemptive strike by going batstuff on this relatively easy issue. As some posters point out, we’re not talking about crap people shoot off in email or post on message boards, we’re talking about errors people are perfectly happy to leave in professional documents.
Not incidentally, apostrophe errors, unlike spelling and some other types of errors, slow and confuse readers.
Yeah, that’ll help. I wonder when this brilliant idea will spill over into other subjects.
Students don’t get the use of apostrophes? Dump it.
Students don’t get that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery? Dump it.
Students don’t get fractions? Dump it.
I skimmed through Fowler’s Modern English Usage this summer. Not the revised third edition, edited by Burchfield, but the second edition, edited by Gower. I distinctly recall Fowler explaining that the rule of not ending sentences with a preposition was a modern invention by the admirers of Latin grammar. Fowler says the rule has no basis in English usage and can safely be ignored, except in conversations with grammar pedants. According to the one review at the Barnes and Noble link above, Burchfield made substantial changes to Fowler’s original work, one of which might have been acceding to the widespread popularity of the rule Fowler originally dismissed.
This sign is on a shop I pass every once in a while:
Ladie’s Wear.
And I’m glad someone picked up that ‘could of’ that was written instead of the correct ‘could have’ (although understandable when the abrreviated version - could’ve - sounds just like ‘could of’).
Hang on there a minute, are you really saying that you think Signor Carlucci’s car is correct while Mr Donohoe’s car isn’t???
The OP was about misuse of apostrophes in plurals, not possessives. In the English language, plurals never take an apostrophe, while posessives always do, regardless of the ethnic origin of the name of the person in question, or whether the name ends in a vowel or a consonant.
This is more a stylistic issue. Most publications these days will defer to the apostrophe-less orthography, but certain styles do allow the apostrophe for plurals if they follow numbers or initials/acronyms.
As far as I know, both Chicago Style and AP Style prefer ditching the apostrophe, but Chicago Style and AP Style will leave it in such plurals as “Ph. D.'s” and “A’s.”
Webster’s New World guideline advocates the use of the apostrophe in numerals, so it would be “1920’s-style death rays.” Don’t forget the hyphen there, kids.