"Apostrophes"
Not a Potted Plant (July 8, 2008)
"I spend a lot of my day reading over evidence. Letters, memos, e-mail, things like that. So I see how a wide range of people write, in settings both formal and candid. And for some reason, a large number of people seem to actively resist the correct use of apostrophes.
"Misapostrophication is a sin of language, it irritates me like head lice, and it needs to be stamped out. Apostrophes are not that difficult. ("Apostrophes" are punctuation marks, not the name of a Greek philosopher.) Here are the rules, and there are only two of them."
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who's noticed the misuse of apostrophes.
That is one of my pet peeves as well. I still remember my high school cafeteria serving "Taco's".
ReplyDeleteTragedy of the Commons
Chief,
ReplyDeleteI think the apostrophe-with-plural-form may be a sort of hypercorrectness. (Sort of like the comic British butler who hattached han haich before hevery hutterance which began with a vowel - overcorreting his Cockney roots.)
"Tragedy of the Commons?" I'll check that out.