Sorry, but this has been bugging me. I see more and more people spelling plurals with apostrophes. For example: I don’t think the Iraqi’s want us there. Or: Let’s pick up a couple of steak’s. Whenever I see this spelling, I want to ask 'The [thing]‘s what?’
Are more people writing possessives when they mean plurals? If so, then why? If not, then why have I noticed it more in the past several years?
I’ve not noticed it happening more, but it’s a pretty common grammatical error. And yeah, it grates on my nerves, too.
That said, grammarians’ opinions are unanimous that some possessives are plural.
Daniel
You knew what I meant. 
Oh, your just being too picky.
:Shakes head: Gaudere’s Law, again.
It’s to picky.
:: slap’s **Speaker ** ::
I’d of slapped him if he’d said ‘Its to picky.’
Seriously, though. I learned when to use an apostrophe. If I can do it, anyone can! What’s the deal?
I read the first draft of the script for the film we’re planning to make. Very difficult, since it contained apostrophes where it shouldn’t, lacked them where it did, ‘their/there/they’re’, ‘your/you’re’, ‘cemetary’ instead of ‘cemetery’, and numerous mis-spellings. It also lacked sufficient punctuation.
heh heh…I was slapping him for missing QS’s “your.” I am honestly confused about the to/too thing. I thought ‘too’ was correct.
I can’t handle it when I get a copmpany wide e-mail from one of the top dogs that blows an apostrophe. I lose sight of the whole message. Friday I was sitting next to my fantasy librarian friend in a unit meeting. Front row seat. Team manager up front was lecturing us about something or another and tossed out, “…and if you have questions you can ask either John or I…” we both, at the same time, blurted out, “John or me.” Individually we would have gotten away with it, but two voices was just loud enough to draw an evil glare.
We didn’t care. It’s his language, he should learn to speak it.
I had a supervisor who grew up in PA. Her e-mails were hard to read, since she wrote in a PA dialect (‘youse’, etc.).
And the me/I think grates on me as well.
I’ve been seeing it more and more often on the SDMB, sad to say. I usually let it pass because I don’t want to be those jerks, and also because i know I’ve made the exact same error as well (and many others besides) in my posts here. But yeah, it does grate.
–Cliffy
Hand-written sign on a change machine in our break area some years ago:
Warning! This machine give’s only quarters’s.
:smack:
Warning! This machine give’s only quarter’s.
The other thing that gets me is when people use quote marks around individual words to express emphasis, which isn’t what quote marks around individual words means. I once saw a sign in a parking lot that said <“No” skateboarding!> So, actually they think it’s OK to skateboard there as long as you’re not so obnoxious about it that they can’t pretend they didn’t know.
–Cliffy
I just received a folder marked Problem’s. Fortunately, my name is Julie, so I’m just going to lay this down somewhere and maybe Problem will find it.
Just last night on the local news the sportscaster was promoting the new show featuring the college football coach. They put up a big graphic on the screen that said, “Bronco Mendenhall Show Start’s Sunday on KSL-TV.”
This was obviously a slide that had been prepared ahead of time, and not just something slapped up on the screen at the last minute. You’d think somebody at the station would have caught that before it went on the air.
This goes to one of my pet theories.
Preview is not your friend.
It’s far too easy to slip an accidental apostrophe in (or leave one out) while you’re typing. Personally, even on preview, I won’t catch it 99 times out a hundred. And I’m a trained professional.
Why? Because it’s and its, there, there and they’re and so on are all real words. If I recognize it as a real word, then it must be the right word. Right?
seperate instead of separate? 
I’ve noticed it more in the last year than I had previously. I also see “awhile” where it’s quite clear that “a while” is called for, and “everyday” where it’s quite clear that “every day” is called for.
I figure a lot of folks don’t grasp and/or care about these things as students and thus don’t learn what is correct, and reinforce each other as they keep making the mistakes, especially in print.
I don’t expect everyone to have top notch language skills, we all have different strong points and weak points. It galls the bejesus out of me, however, when people who use language specifically as a tool in their profession (e.g. journalists, speakers, writers) don’t use it correctly. If plumbers or carpenters or mechanics used their tools so sloppily, their work would be pretty crappy. Come to think of it, the work of some of these journalists, speakers, and writers is…
Your’e both wrong. Its’ -
Its to picky.
Wow … you must live in a community filled with English professors, technical writers and professional copy editors. Around here, it’s -
Warning! “This” machine Give’s “only” case Quarter.
Getting back to the OP for just a minute, I believe that yer average illiterate cannot grasp the concept of a word ending with a vowel other than E having a conventional plural: your very own erstwhile Vice President Danforth Quayle being a prime example. Proper words do not normally end in a vowel, but plurals do so … I know! Shove in an apostrophe!
On the use of “quotation marks” all over the place: I worked at the UK Patent Office in the early 1980s, in the Trade Marks Registry. Every week the Trade Mark Journal was published, giving details of all the trade (and service) marks deemed ready for registration. In those days, under the Trade Marks Act of 1938, non-registrable matter in the mark was subject to a disclaimer - for example, Registration of this mark shall give no right to the exclusive use of the words “baked beans”. Sometimes, the matter to be disclaimed was not a word or a letter but what is known in the trade as a device. But some twat started putting quotation marks around the device as well - Registration of this mark shall give no right to the exclusive use of the device of a “penguin”. I tried and tried and tried every week at proof stage to get them to change it but nobody listened.