Has anyone else noticed that it has suddenly become acceptable and common for people to use an apostrophe to indicate the plural?
For example, instead of writing, “The cows are in the field”, it has suddenly become common and acceptable to write “The cow’s are in the field”. Here are some examples of things I have actually seen. “Please take kid’s by the hand”, “We are closed for the holiday’s”, “Please leave shoe’s at the door”, “Dear Julia, how are thing’s going?”
It seems like no one can add an ‘S’ to a word without preceeding it with an apostrophe!
When it started getting bad a couple of years ago, I wrote it off as just a few isolated incidents. Now, though, I’m starting to really worry. I see this type of thing happening all over the place, and not just in places where it’s not such a big deal. I’ve seen it in e-mails, message boards, and web sites, which isn’t a huge deal. What really gets me is that now I’m seeing it on signs (both handwritten and professionally made) in public places. I’ve seen it multiple times in periodicals and books, and even a couple of times on local news text! I’ve seen it in the literature for various organizations… it seems to be everwhere.
What is happening? Why is this happening? What can be done?
OMG! That annoys the mess out of me! I thought I was the only one who noticed just how wrong it was. Wish I could help you as to why it’s happening… :shrug:
Thank you SO much for that link! Now I’m really feeling better about things! I just really needed to know that I’m not the only one who will be passing along the correct usage of the apostrophe to friends and family!
Welcome aboard the SDMB eloramoonjajs. It seems to be increasingly common but it certainly isn’t acceptable except, perhaps, among people who don’t know or care that it’s incorrect.
The reason why it’s happening is because English is not taught correctly and hasn’t been for many years. Although I don’t have a cite for this, I read recently a case of three passengers on a train (all adults). One of them was asking her friend to quiz her on some basic rules of English grammar. The third asked why they were doing this and was told that the woman being quizzed was a primary school teacher. She had to teach the rules to her class that morning and didn’t know them herself.
All joking apart, JohnT, if you can’t remember how to use an apostophe that says more about you than it does about the rules. If they were really hard the rest of us wouldn’t be able to remember them either.
What ratatoskK said. You are overstating your case to say that this has become ‘acceptable’. The examples you give are just plain flat-out wrong and, judging by a very rapid straw-poll of my colleagues here, would be recognised as such by the majority of people.
Furthermore, people have been misusing apostrophes for years. One example that seems to be particularly prevalent is " potato’s "; I imagine the reasoning here is that the writer was vaguely aware that there was something extra they had to add when pluralising “potato”, but couldn’t put their finger on it exactly and so decided to chuck an apostrophe in for safety’s sake. That said, I’ve often seen " potatoe’s " as well, which is even more bizarre.
Trust me, everyone has their own grammatical pet peeve- for my own part, I have a curious dislike for superfluous 'S’s at the end of words or names- referring to ‘Trivial Pursuits’, for example, when it says clearly on the goddamn box ‘Trivial Pursuit’. No idea why that gets to me so much!
I’ve not noticed that the extraneous apostrophe is more acceptable or common. It appears far too often. Most ironic was a sign on a local church that read, “WELCOME UNCA STUDENT’S!”
Eventually, someone apparently gave the church a gentle correction: the apostrophe disappeared.
My personal grammar peeve is the unnecessary quotation marks, including the ever-popular
An ex-friend (a whole story unto itself) has the annoying habit of inccorrectly using or failing to use apostrpohes with almost absolute consistency. One could correct her emails by eliminating any apostrophe she used and adding them wherever there is a trailing “s.” The kicker is she wants to be a primary school teacher.
