Apostrophe Protection Society | Hacker News Reader

Apostrophe Protection Society

apostrophe.org.uk

155 pointsTomte176 comments

I have an almost, but not quite, completely unrelated anecdote about this.

I got on the internet in the early 2000s as a teenager, and would often be in various online chatrooms. Tricking people into visiting "shock sites" (most famously goatse.cx) seemed to be a common habit of certain denizens of these communities, either to people they didn't like or just because they thought it was funny.

Somehow I managed to avoid ever falling victim to this, but there was one exception I recall, in which I was linked to a website purporting to be website of the "Apostrophe Protection Society". After only a moment some kind of JavaScript kicked in to instead change the contents of the page to some goatse.cx-style shock image which I don't recall. In other words, the "Apostrophe Protection Society" page just existed as a kind of bait-and-switch cover.

I quickly closed the page, and ironically what I ended up remembering is not anything about the shock image but the notion of the "Apostrophe Protection Society". I think at the time I assumed that the notion of the "Apostrophe Protection Society" was intended to be part of the joke - that nobody would ever actually make such an organisation.

I never bumped into that site again, but for heaven knows why (my memory is scary sometimes) I still remember the existence of this site pretending to be about an "Apostrophe Protection Society" (or some similar title).

So, TIL it actually is real - and actually a legitimate organisation. Presumably whoever made the above website must have picked the website at random and copied its contents. Well, I hope this random anecdote about what the web used to be like is of interest to someone...

>(most famously Goatse)

No! speaking of lost punctuation marks, even more humorously goatse.cx

it's pronounced "goatsex". get it? get the leet joke? the joke doesn't work if you misinterpret the semantic versioning "point" as a full stop. full stop.

Fixed ;)

First sentence from Wikipedia: "goatse.cx, often spelled without the .cx top-level domain as Goatse, was an internet domain that originally housed an Internet shock site."

Doing god's work. There used to be a sign posted in a parking lot near me that said "METER'S TAKES QUARTER'S ONLY" that used to drive me nuts.

Someone (likely an APS agent) even typed up a list of the grammatical errors made on the sign, and taped it to the bottom of it:

https://i.imgur.com/y5ENADH.jpg

Now we just need an agency to safeguard us against misusing "less" when "fewer" would be correct (like Avril Incandenza in Infinite Jest).

> There used to be a sign posted in a parking lot near me that said "METER'S TAKES QUARTER'S ONLY" that used to drive me nuts.

Right, a meter's coin slot takes a quarter's unit of value. :)

> a meter's

There were multiple meters, the intent was to pluralize "meter." Which makes "takes" incorrect (vs "take"). Maybe I should get out more.

“Each meter’s..."

Just a poor choice if which words to elide for space. :)

Perhaps there was a single meter which only took dimes? :)

> Now we just need an agency to safeguard us against misusing "less" when "fewer" would be correct

Genuinely curious, is this for pedantry, or does the word choice matter? Since the opposite of both is "more", why is there a need for a distinction in one direction and not the other?

Does "The tank is too full, fill it with fewer water next time" sound correct to you?

"Fewer" typically refers to countables, "10 items or fewer."

"Less" is used for things that don't have a plural form or are not countable, "there's less water in the pool this morning."

The opposite of few maybe many, but many is not the opposite of fewer as the parent asks.

Consider

There are fewer people on the West Coast.

There are many people on the East Coast.

"Many," is not a comparator.

Fair enough, "additional" is an opposite of "fewer." I'll concede "more" is also.

> The opposite of few maybe many

"Maybe" is an adverb. Perhaps you meant "may be?" :)

Morether. Like further but with more.

Moreover.

Less instead of fewer sort of bugs me. But I've even seen less used in The Economist when I would have thought fewer was more correct so I think the answer is it's pedantry at this point. (To be clear, pedantry in the sense that less can be (usually?) substituted for fewer but not the other way around.)

I read that as, "we've already committed atrocities with more, why wouldn't we do the same with less"? ;-)

The world would be a better place if we committed fewer atrocities with less ;)

The underlying distinction is about mass versus countable nouns.

You can't refer to a sheet of paper as "a paper" (that refers to something else - a completed document). And you can't call a piece of furniture "a furniture", nor can you ask for "a scissors". They are mass nouns, inherently plural, referring to an abstract, indefinite amount of something. (Or in English, something coming in pairs, like scissors.) To refer to a specific instance, you need to use a determiner like "a piece of paper".

Or a head of cattle. You can't have two cattles. You have two head of cattle. Cattle come in a herd with an ambiguous number of them Other nouns are count nouns, and can be directly counted; they're definitive. A cat, two cats, four cats. Count nouns go with "fewer". Mass nouns go with "less". Over-educated writers might make a distinction here where "fewer cattle" is visualizing a few individuals, while "less cattle" is visualizing a smaller herd. I do think that's overly pedantic. Very few people make that distinction cleanly.

Some languages have no concept of count nouns at all, all nouns are mass nouns. Some languages have no concept of mass nouns, and all nouns are count nouns. Or nearly so. English has and uses both. Some cases are sort of blurry or unclear. "Six rains" = it has rained six times. That's maybe grammatical, but it's very unnatural in English. We do not feel we can count the times it rains, that way. It has to qualify a word that can be counted, like "times" - a pattern so common we get abbreviated counter words like "once" and "twice". Most languages have a touch of both patterns. Even in Chinese, which supposedly has no count nouns, there a few places when you do just count things directly.

So, no, it's not necessary. But if your language does make the distinction, it's very common for agreement patterns to show up based around that distinction. Akin to how French adjectives agree with their noun in number and gender.

> Even in Chinese, which supposedly has no count nouns, there a few places when you do just count things directly.

Are those things nouns? Days, for example, must be counted directly, except that the grammar is very clear that 天 is not a noun at all.

月 can be used with or without a measure word, but the obvious analysis would be that it is a noun if used with a measure word and not if counted directly, much like 人.

(Preemptive counterargument: is "right" a noun or an adjective?)

This did not address the question of why distinguish between mass and count in “less/fewer” but not “more”.

> nor can you ask for "a scissors"

But you can ask for "the scissors".

Why does that sound OK but the other does not?

(Not debating, genuinely curious.)

Because scissors is plural, which does not have an indefinite article. You can ask for scissors, like you can ask for documents. (And you cannot ask for a documents, only for a document.)

A pair of scissors, a pair of trousers. I shortened the trousers with scissors.

One nitpick: Grammatically, mass nouns are not (necessarily) plural. You’d say “Paper is made from wood.”, not “Paper are made from wood.” (Of course, the pair words like scissors are different, i.e. “My scissors are in my backpack.” (I also seem to recall that there are non-pair mass nouns that only exist in plural form, but I cannot think of any examples.)

That's not a nitpick; that's agreement.

Less water, fewer onions.

Edit: not every word ending in "s" is plural. Some of them were just stolen from other languages and ended up with a final "s".

You said in your post that mass nouns are “inherently plural”, which grammatically they are not. I suppose you were referring to the meanings of those words, though.

In my head the opposite of fewer (“more”) and the opposite of less (“more”) feel like different words that happen to be homonyms.

I haven’t looked it up but this is unlikely to have been the etymological history — if there ever even were two different words at all, one likely crowded the other out. But anyway, that’s how my brain works.

They didn't apostrophize TAKE'S? Barbarian's.

I'm actually more upset that I can't find a readable closeup of the affixed corrections, than I am about the posted sign.

Sadly taken at a time when phones with cameras were fairly new (with poor resolution), and taking photos in public spaces was largely considered uncouth (imagine!)

The owner (dictator) of the parking lot can do whatever he wants. His intelligence is evidenced in his wealth. That's how the free market works.

> His intelligence is evidenced in his wealth. That's how the free market works.

Yet we have so so many stupid rich people and many many more brilliant poor people.

Not apostrophe-related, but you just reminded me of a sign I kept seeing at my local hospital a while back. It said (and I took a picture of it, because it bugged me so much):

    NO PETS
    No Dogs or Pets
    Trained Guide Dogs or Service Animals Welcome
    No dogs or pets are allowed.

When I read this, I imagine a guy with thick glasses and a white lab coat feeding these rules into a wall-sized 1950s computer and smoke coming out.

There is something subtly nostalgic and pleasant with how that notice is written. (The old-fashioned style.)

Have you ever read ‘The Monkey Wrench’, by Gordon Dickson?

https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v47n06_1951-08_MadMax...

No dog's or pet's allowed!

Feels like the same kind of language I use when trying to get ChatGPT to stop doing the thing. Just repeat my negative commands in various, slightly different wordings and hope one of them sticks

In a time when a more and more people can't spell "too," it seems ambitious to school them on "less" vs. "fewer."

But when I do try to explain why "less" and "fewer" are not interchangeable, I usually just say, "Do you want fewer syrup on your pancakes?"

Then there's "transition" as a verb: Do you illumination a room when it's dark?

We can go on and on, but we can't leave this one out: "would of." I always call that out in any comment forum. This just can't be let go.

And now, Weird Al has some words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

> But when I do try to explain why "less" and "fewer" are not interchangeable, I usually just say, "Do you want fewer syrup on your pancakes?"

This feels like a strawman: As evidenced by the fact that everyone would agree your example sentence is ungrammatical, clearly "less" and "fewer" are not strictly interchangeable, either prescriptively or descriptively.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't see how your example is relevant to the cases where people do in fact use "less" to mean "fewer" (or vice versa).

First: That's not what a strawman is. Second: If the relevance isn't clear, I leave it to you to suggest a better example.

The problem with the example is: Some has used less where you would have preferred fewer. You answer with an example, where fewer is used but only less is generally considered grammatical. (In other words, the replacement goes in the opposite direction.) But it is perfectly consistent to say that fewer is restricted to countable nouns while less can be used universally.

"Consistent" with what?

Consistent with how language works. Words have partial overlaps and “subset” relations all the time.

In the case of less and fewer, there isn’t even really a problem, because there are very few cases where using less when fewer would (also) be appropriate leads to confusion. (Otherwise the same distinction would surely also exist for more.)

I’m afraid, the only real “problem” is that for people who are accustomed to the distinction, using the “wrong” one gives a nails-on-chalkboard sensation.

With people, for instance? I commonly hear "less people" these days. It's weird to me to think of people as being like water or sand.

> And now, Weird Al has some words

A linguist had some words in response[0]

> While "grammar nerds" are psyched about Weird Al's new "Word Crimes" video, many linguists are shaking their heads and feeling a little hopeless about what the public enthusiasm about it represents: a society where largely trivial, largely arbitrary standards of linguistic correctness are heavily privileged, and people feel justified in degrading and attacking those who don't do things the "correct" way.

I know who I'm trusting to speak confidently about language usage.

[0] https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=13521

I believe in self-reliance.

> In a time when a more and more people can't spell "too," it seems ambitious to school them on "less" vs. "fewer."

Over half of the American population reads below a 6th grade level. We should encourage them to improve at every opportunity.

I fully agree. And yet you see people (above in this thread, even) who defend illiteracy with the old "you're just a grammar nazi; language is a 'living entity'" trope.

Transition is an odd one to get hung up on. We may not illumination but we do vacation, function, question, proposition, requisition, audition, reposition, and many other words of similar etymology.

Not really. Many of those do not have other verb forms that mean the same thing.

I don’t understand what you mean here.

The verb form of "transition" is "transit." But there is no similar form of "function" (like "funct," for example).

Therefore the comparison is invalid.

I disagree that to transit is the right verb form of transition in general. Transit (to my ear) is pretty much limited to a change of place, usually even through something (you might “transit a stretch of wood”, to steal Merriam-Webster’s example). Transition is more generally about a state of change.

By the same token, you could still reject to question because the verb to quest exists.

Well, that's... like... your opinion, man. But not supported by etymology.

"Quest" and "question" are also not a valid comparison, because the two forms aren't even clearly the same word. For example, if someone goes on a quest through the jungle, you don't say "his question through the jungle was interrupted by a phone call from home." Or, "he questioned from one end of the jungle to the other."

But quest and question have the same etymology, just like transit and transition. Having the same etymology clearly does not mean that the words cannot diverge in meaning. And if you looked up transit and transition in a dictionary, you’d find that they’re considered distinct in meaning, much along the lines of what I wrote.

Which dictionary?

And quest/question are not parallel to transit/transition. If you think otherwise, please provide an example.

Merriam-Webster, OED, Wiktionary. (If you have a preferred dictionary not on the list, I’m sure you can look there yourself.) All of them have some variant of “to pass through” as the primary meaning of to transit and “to change from one state, place, etc. to another” as the meaning of to transition.

And I didn’t claim that quest and question had a similar relation as transit and transition in meaning, only that in both cases, the two words have the same etymological root. I mentioned this in reference to your claim that my opinion was not supported by etymology. It doesn’t have to be, because etymology doesn’t dictate the current meaning of a word, it can just try to explain it.

Vacate, query (or inquire), propose, require, audit, (re)posit. Idk about function but the word might be out there. The thing is that all of these have slightly shifted meanings when denominalized in English. To proposition someone isn’t just to propose something. And for a liquid to transition into vapor isn’t for it to transit.

Edit: We don’t have a straight verb but we do have fungible. So we could try to bring funge into the mix as the “proper” verb.

Note that I said "many." And yes it is "transit" when you go from water to vapor.

I do like "funge." Let's go for it! I'd be gruntled.

Merriam-Webster lists transition as both noun and verb from at east 1946.

The verbs transit and transition mean different things. The former is the physical movement, the latter is a change of state.

In the process of evaporation, water transitions from liquid to gaseous state. It doesn't *transit from liquid to gas.

Then there's the ongoing weakening of strong verbs.

The past tense of "write" is not "writed". The past tense of "stand" is not "standed".

Wow, is that becoming a thing? I haven't seen this phenomenon yet.

I think it has merit since it's easier to remember and is more consistent with other verbs. There is no (good) reason for only a few verbs being so different.

There's a donut shop near me named Loi's Donuts. Not Lois's or Lois'. Yes, the owner's name is Lois, not Loi. I guess the apostrophe just means, Hey, there's an "S" coming up!

The "use" page is missing several details, some important:

* 1 The non-ASCII apostrophe is always ’, so programs that automatically insert smart quotes do the wrong thing for apostrophes at the start of a word. Some better examples IMHO: ’tis (it is), ’nuff (enough), ’cause (because), ’em (them), ’fraid (afraid), ’n’ (and),

* 2 The "name ends with s" rule also applies to names ending with "x".

* 3 is arguably just a special case of 2 (e.g. we can say "a holiday of two weeks"), but note that this is very similar to the attributive use (7) which never† uses the plural or an apostrophe but does use a hyphen (a two-week holiday).

* 5 There are, in fact, grammatically-valid uses of "its’", when "it" is a noun rather than a pronoun. A non-derogatory example, in some variants of tag (the children's game), the its’ advantage increases over time.

* 6 Whether apostrophes are used for plurals of non-words is a matter of style, not correctness.

* 7, † Some apparent exceptions are due to words that are actually collective instead of plural for the particular use case. For example, "arms industry" is like "clothes industry". More often, people use errors and omit the required apostrophe. "farmers market" is an abomination.

Technically, ’ isn't an apostrophe at all, but a right single quotation mark. I honestly thought this post was going to finally be some validation of my annoyance at everyone using the wrong Unicode character just because font makers make the apostrophe more “ugly”.

Absolutely not, the Unicode Standard explicitly states that U+2019 (’) RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK “is the preferred character to use for apostrophe”. You can see this in the code chart at https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf and it is restated in section “Apostrophes”, 6.2 General Punctuation.

Huh, TIL. That's kind of annoying but good to know, thanks!

The "name ends with s" rule is surprisingly permissive -- I'm surprised an organization that claims to work to protect the apostrophe would allow one to be stripped of its due support 's'. And without an analogous rule for non-name nouns ending in 's', it's just needlessly inconsistent.

Protect the apostrophe! Demand the rightful 's'!

(1) is even more annoying in German where we use single quotes ‚like this‘ (i.e. a comma-looking opening quote and the English opening quote as the closing quote). Apostrophes are the same as in English, though.

Unfortunately, (almost?) all smart quote implementations default to replacing ' at the end of a word by a closing quote (even if no opening quote precedes it), so you get tons of apostrophes pointing in the wrong direction (looking like 6 instead of 9).

I was ranting one day a few years ago at work about all the laminated signs such as "clean your dishes" or "flush the toilet" around and why they were useless at actually altering behavior. I came in the next day and one of my co-workers had had the great idea to stick a laminated sign in my lab that said, "Do not place lamanated sign's in this lab". I have left it up to this day because of the misspelling and misuse of the apostrophe, it always makes me laugh.

That's very Fight Club

This is most wonderfully lampooned by Terry Pratchett in Going Postal and Making Money.

https://wiki.lspace.org/A._Parker_and_Son%27s

https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/tyyo47/one_of_my...

I want to hear the pronunciation difference between sons and son's.

There's an audiobook version...

Edit: And a TV version, apparently.

I think there's a small difference in intonation

Perhaps ' is pronounced as a small tongue click?

Like in some African languages? I like it.

What's the word for the vision equivalent of misophonia?

In the UK a misplaced apostrophe (in a plural or in possessive its) is called a "greengrocers' apostrophe", presumably due to folks in that trade being particularly susceptible to errors in their signs, in turn partially due to the slightly unusual nature of the nouns they are pluralising; "bananas" is slightly teasing you to stick one in, but "mangos" more so as just looks like a Greek island otherwise, unless you opt for the -oes form.

Ha. That makes sense, I wonder why or how that became a thing?

It's the same case in the US -- you see it most in locally owned mom-and-pop style stores, especially ones that have been around for a while.

It genuinely makes me wonder if it's out of ignorance, or if it's intentionally keeping a kind of old-school charm. "If apostrophes were good enough for my grandfather, they're good enough for me!"

Of course, there's also a store local to me that has "&AMP;" on its big sign instead of "&", so I don't want to read in too much intention. (And you can tell it's not the kind of business that can afford to have a replacement sign made.)

Fond of signs saying things like "sparrowgrass" at greengrocers or market stalls too.

Maybe by coincidence but a missing apostrophe was in the news today - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/17/hampshire-vi...

Probably not a coincidence. I read that article today too; the submitter could very well have done that and went to the linked website afterwards.

I like to interpret these kinds of names as though the word was a plural noun. Kings Cross: monarchs have to get to the other side of the road just like the rest of us. Herons Court: a description of avian mating behaviour.

I don't think St Marys Terrace really works though.

Oh wow, brace yourself for the flood of copy editors. Here it come's.

Its really not such a big deal.

I always suggest people who aren't good at apostrophe rules to just leave them out entirely. Better to seem lazy than wrong, I figure.

The irony is that smartphone keyboards seem to randomly replace correct "it's"s with incorrect "it's"s, so it actually takes more work to appear lazy by going back and correcting them.

Auto-correct is trash. I don't understand why people use it.

This is fantastic. I never noticed that's exactly how I interpret the total absence of appropriate punctuation. Bonus points if you ignore capitalization as well.

I saw some guide to Zoomer communication recently which talked about how ... is perceived as "aggressive", which blew my mind. Better to just stick to lowercase letters. (Autocorrect makes this a pain though - I had to go back and fix the capitalization of "is" in the last sentence.)

I have an Irish name, such as O’Donnell, and even in 2023 it’s not unusual for a web site to say “Invalid last name” when entered. Like it’s 1996 and I’m doing a SQL injection attack.

I've seen my name show as eg O#&36;Donnell. Thinking of changing it to droptables.

Reminds me of this old comic: https://www.angryflower.com/247.html

>It's free, so why not join today!

Evidently their passion for punctuation does not extend to the question mark.

> Depending on the context, a rhetorical question can end in a question mark or an exclamation mark.

https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/grammar-punctuation-and-conve...

  When the name ends in an "s", you either add an apostrophe and "s" or just an apostrophe.

  - James's pen or James' pen
  - Mr Jones's van or Mr Jones' van

Who accepts the first style? I thought this was a non-negotiable error.

Edit: American

I was taught the former. You'd pronounce the "'s" if you were speaking it, rather than saying "Mr Jones van" or "James pen".

I use s’ and it’s one of the more frequent corrections suggested to me, but that’s what was taught to me in grade and high school.

Both AP (usually--unless the following word starts with an s) and Chicago prefer s-apostrophe-s for singular nouns. Though, on their website, Chicago seems fairly ambivalent about it. The bottom line is that a copyeditor may correct you but it's pretty far away from grammatical faux pas territory. (Personally I go with just s-apostrophe.)

I only accept the first style, because I pronounce it "Jameses pen", not "James pen". If there are multiple choices and one more closely resembles the spoken language, I don't see any reason to save a written letter. Otherwise you have "James' pen" being pronounced "Jameses pen", but "the voters' choice" for some reason is not pronounced "the voterses choice". You end up with one specific circumstance where an apostrophe is actually pronounced, and I really don't like that.

I'm also American.

I don't add the extra s, nor do I speak it aloud. Also American (western).

So you'd pronounce "I have James' pen" as "I have James pen"?

I do. It's rare to be confusing.

And if it were, I would not do Jameses, I would go traditional and say James his pen (since 's is a contraction of his)

It's not a contraction. It's a possessive, and specifically not a contraction of "James his".

As I had read that it was, I went searching for more authority and it looks like it was and it wasn't as best I can try to figure out from this article

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_genitive

In the UK I would say the latter is incorrect and would never use it in writing.

Wait, you don't think "James'" is acceptable at all? What about "Jesus'", which is pretty common as an affected archaism?

Everyone who was taught s' is only for plural words.

The rule is there to eliminate a 3rd -s noise. James's is fine. Moses's or Jesus's is less so (but you can do it if you want).

AP (usually), Chicago, and The Economist style guides all specify the first use for singular nouns--so it does seem to be officially preferred in both US and British English. Which I did not actually know.

I thought about this for a bit a month or two back. I decided that I was consistent about my spelling matching my pronunciation (though a -s’ one still entails a very subtle adjustment of the final phoneme compared to its -s origin), but I couldn’t find any consistent rule I was following about the pronunciation. Number of syllables was readily falsified; concluding phoneme (/s/ like Chris or /z/ like James) was readily falsified; I didn’t delve far enough into the concluding syllable (e.g. “Jesus’” already ends in /zəz/, ending in /zəzəz/ just makes me think of Sméagol and his fisheses), so there may still be a pattern, but for now I think it may just be irregular.

Pronunciation-dependent spelling is not novel in English: “a” and “an” are the same word, but the choice depends on the succeeding phoneme. The King James Version of the Bible uses the phrase “an horse for an hundred pieces of silver”, showing that the dominant accent at the time used a silent h in both words: “an ’orse for an ’undred pieces of silver”. I contemplated the matter a few years ago and decided that “a horse for a hundred pieces of silver” was a more reasonable reading of the phrase in Australian English (though most will diligently read the clumsy “an horse, &c.”).

This is one of the subtleties across accents. An American might write “an herb” because they’ll pronounce it “an ’erb”, whereas an Australian would write “a herb” because we sound the h.

The variations of "an h-" are one of my favorite things to stumble on, because it's one of the few times that the written word tells you what kind of accent the writer has.

Can also be seen with SQL. As in e.g. "a/an SQL injection attack"

These are definitely both acceptable.

In fact I'd go so far as to say that the apostrophe-only style ("James'") is somewhat archaic and definitely out of fashion.

Thanks for bringing this up. I usually wonder which of the styles is correct..

The omission rules are what I see bungled most these days, as well as typographical things like the wrong version of the smart apostrophe appearing in the wrong place.

Errors like "They want to outlaw Christian's" are easily avoidable; just stay away from Facebook comments.

Heh, I have two related pet peeves.

The first is kinda the opposite of this website's problem: people using apostrophes to denote possession in Dutch. That's supposed to be wrong, but people have adopted it from English. (Though supposedly, it was also already fairly widespread before English was. I'm also not so sure whether it can realistically be considered wrong nowadays, given its prevalence.)

The other is should've. That's a contraction, and the original is should have, not should of. Funnily enough this is a mistake no Dutch person (or non-native speaker in general, I think) makes, but I see it a lot online.

And finally, I wonder how many mistakes I made in this comment

Conversely, a lot of Dutch people use apostrophes for plurals in English, probably more so than the average non-native speaker, because that's considered correct in Dutch.

Mixing languages is hard. I've lived abroad for a few years I can no longer tell the time in Dutch. Does "half two" mean "half past two" (14:30) or "half of two" (13:30)? From where I'm sitting now, I'm genuinely not sure; in (British) English it's usually the latter, although that's confusing as well because Americans usually mean the former (or was it the reverse?)

Maybe I'm just stupid – I've never been able to recite the alphabet either (always get confused somewhere after O/P).

For plurals in Dutch it's only correct if the pronunciation of the letter before the s would change, I believe, whereas English just changes the spelling. So in Dutch it's baby's, in English babies, but both say computers. But yeah, I think it's just compensation because people have memorised that English uses more apostrophes than Dutch.

I can tell the time in Dutch, but having to switch between British and American English makes that I indeed have no idea which interpretation of half two is correct when. I just make sure to say half past two.

Despite the best efforts of the APS, I have to assume syntax and style guides will have to just update their rules eventually, rather than everyone else learning to do it their way. Language evolves by knuckleheads making mistakes so often they become standard usage. The realization of that fact offended me, until I realized the snapshot of the language I thought was so precious was also the result of that same process of gradual knuckleheadification. Instead, it just terrifies me now, knowing it's been rule by knuckleheads all the way back into the misty dawn of mankind.

The only rule that never changes is that all the rules are subject to change. We’re just flying along on our temperate little rock fighting wars and dying on our hills about the rules that were never rules at all.

A contrarian view: <https://angryflower.com/495.html>

In this case, saying "I emptied the trashcans trash" and there are multiple cans, wouldn't clearly indicate that I only emptied one vs all of them.

Per the link, the answer to your (and any) objection is “SILENCE!! OBEY!!!”.

Which is a followup to https://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

Which is also available as a poster: <https://angryflower.com/aposter.html>

John Richards, self-confessed pedant and founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society – obituary, 24 April 2021

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2021/04/24/john-richa...

I don't get why people get all bothered by this kind of stuff. The reason people make these mistakes is because it's all pronounced exactly the same, and no one is confused by what "It's wrong" and "Its wrong" means, when pronounced or when written.

The "Correct Use of the Apostrophe in the English Language" page claims that the rules are "very simple". If they're that simple then why do you need 8 bullet-points and five screens of text to explain these "very simple" rules?

I wish people were more relaxed about this kind of thing. Just accept "its" and "it's" as correct, and "Two week's time" and "Two weeks' time", etc. No one gets confused by this sort of thing.

Our brains are geared towards spoken language, not written language. My main take-aware from this is that we should change the spelling to be less error-prone, or just accept both as correct. The problem is with the spelling, not the people.

The problem is not that it's confusing but that, because the rules exist and set our expectations, we mentally trip over violations of them. We stop absorbing what was intended to be communicated and have to back up and try again. I don't disagree that changing the rules would solve this, but we haven't done that. So in individual instances of written communication which each of us does have the power to affect, it's on the writer to ensure the reader has no unnecessary trouble. I could wear boots inside your house, but I'd rather you clean up the Lego.

You're only bothered by it if you let yourself be bothered by it. "Mentally tripping over it" is something entirely within your own control.

Unlike some other languages the English language doesn't even have "official rules"; it's a loose consensus of the speakers of the language (i.e. you and me). You can quite literally set your own rules.

OK, but I notice you're still using apostrophes in all their accepted right places, and I assume that's because you intend to accommodate me and other readers who haven't discarded the rules and would still trip. Earnestly, thank you, and please keep it up, because unless new rules emerge (whether official or just usage), we'll continue to be tripped up when the existing scheme isn't followed.

I customize more than enough things in my life for the sake of "better". It's not worth the tradeoff to deviate and be the pioneer every time. Some things you gotta run stock because compatibility is a major benefit.

I mean, obviously I realize that some people will take what I write less serious if I don't correctly use apostrophes, so it's worth the effort. I also think the whole "don't split infinitives" thing is utter bollocks, but if you know that a section of your audience will get all triggered over it then it's probably best to avoid (even though it's silly).

My point isn't that you or I should stop writing apostrophes, but that you should stop being bothered by other people not always using the correctly (or rather, our perception of what's "correct").

Its definately a loosing battle.

An important function of language (and accent) is to distinguish between groups/classes of people.

Makes it easy to tell if someone spent many years at school, or learnt a "trade", to tell people from one (monied) area from a less affluent part of town.

For this function, "correct" or "incorrect" use of apostrophes (like an accent) is serving a very clear purpose - telling others your position in society.

As a non-native speaker who has learned English primarily by reading, sentences with these mistakes often confuse me, especially if they're complicated. Since “its” and “it's” are in completely different grammar categories, I basically have to re-parse the whole sentence.

Non english speaker here. One use which I’ve encountered recently and seems off to me, is when people say something like: I’ve apples in my bag. Is this correct? I’ve grown up using ‘ve only for shortening the past perfect (or whatever verb form is that, excuse my grammar, school was a long time ago)

It's a regional thing. Common in Britain, but sounds strange to Americans, and looks even stranger in writing.

Not sure about other parts of the anglosphere.

Where? Reads UK english to me, I’ve never heard that in the US.

I googled and the internet seems to agree with me.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8/is-it-appropri...

Yes, it is correct: "I have apples in my bag"

I found it interesting to learn that possessive apostrophes are more or less an English language only thing. Possessive word endings ("Tomes pen") used to be a thing, but I guess got abbreviated so much (Tom's pen) they no longer exist.

This is very interesting, do you have a source?

In eats, shoots and leaves I recall the claim being made that apostrophes can be used for plurality with borrowed words. A particular example would thus be the "potato". Therefore, a so-called grocer's apostrophe to pluralise potato would be ok, while to pluralise turnip it would not.

Similarly it was considered appropriate for pluralising numbers and days of the week. "There are fifty-two Wednesday's in a normal year." However, if the contraction argument were correct then "Tomes Pen" -> "Tom's Pen" could also allow "Potatoes" -> "Potato's"

I said it from memory, but googling looks like meriam webster has a nice article: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/history-and-use-of-t...

A professor of mine used to say that the original form (don't know what time period; he never explained that) was "Tom, his pen", so therefore the apostrophe still indicates elided characters. I don't know whether his example is correct, or yours, or both, but they're clearly pointing in the same direction.

Since English is a Germanic language, it seems more likely to me that the possessive ‘s’ is a carryover from the German genitive case. Pure speculation, but perhaps the apostrophe was added as case endings disappeared from English (except for the rare exceptions like who/whom)

Note that it's also spilling over into German, frequently called "Deppenapostroph" by people with a similar, but less polite view as those behind the article. So Germans absolutely do assume that it is the same thing, to the point where many seem to feel that it would be more correct to write it like the English do.

I like this. But now it's tempting to use 'r for plural nouns.

Looks like both are right apparently? Although, mainly your professor's: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/history-and-use-of-t...

Thank you! I didn't take the time to google anything this morning.

However, from that article:

>Some people thought that the ’s at the end of a word indicating possession was simply a stand-in for “his,” and so “the king’s book” would be the shortened version of “the king his book.” This theory is no longer popular. Instead, it seems likely that the genitive apostrophe is an illustration of our language’s older, highly inflectional state.

So... Maybe. But I don't think it's "mainly" my professor's!

Which makes me sad, because he was a man of good cheer, and erudition, who so enjoyed having his ideas challenged by interesting new ones. I would have enjoyed going down this particular linguistic / orthographic rabbit hole with him. He passed away last year, and this conversation reminded me how much I miss him.

He had a good innings, though! 1930 - 2022. What a wonderful, interesting life.

Three on the page:

> If you’re looking for guidance on the correct use of apostrophes, …

> It's free, so why not join today!

> Do please have a browse and see if there’s anything you want to purchase.

I’m genuinely disappointed at this inconsistency: the first and third use curly quotes, the second uses straight quotes. They should pick one style (which, for such an organisation, should I think fairly clearly be the curly, unless they go bizarre and decide that U+0027 APOSTROPHE’s name is enough to warrant protecting it despite its inferiority to U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) and stick with it assiduously.

They’ve also got a pair of double quotes on the quotation at the end, and they’re straight.

I have to object to the recommendation to fix an error that results in a "corrected" form that reads

> 1000s of bargains here!

The problem with a sentence that says "1000's" isn't just the presence of the apostrophe. "1000" is not a substitute for the word "thousand". It means "one thousand". "1000s" therefore is a nonsense construction, apostrophe or not, unless you're talking about years or other number ranges. The same goes for "millions", etc, as well as "hundreds". (This doesn't apply to 10; "10s of thousands" is acceptable and correct.)

Related reading: https://begthequestion.info/

Sort of OT, but the list of uses (https://www.apostrophe.org.uk/apostrophe-use) matches what I do except for "6. Apostrophes are NEVER used to denote plurals!"

I was taught that for numbers and acronyms, you do use apostrophes.

Was anyone else taught that? Or am I the only one?

Who taught you that? It is not proper use. I cringe when I see ABC’s and 123’s. Worse than fingernails on the chalkboard.

Funny, because I feel the exact opposite.

And the answer is every English teacher I had growing up.

>every English teacher I had growing up.

I doubt that.

Well, there were some that didn't talk about it, but the ones that did all said the same thing.

Huh. All the style manuals were saying something quite different last time I checked. Strange!

In modern use it is apparently common to write e.g. 40ties or 90ties.

I'm not sure what the thinking is, or why 40s or 90s aren't "enough".

It figures this is English.

I sympathize, but I'm afraid that war's been lost. If I were to send in every example I see, it would be a full time job.

On the other hand, given the marginal utility of the apostrophe (relative to, say, the comma or the parenthesis) as well as the fact that so many people seem to have a hard time keeping it straight, Im tempted to conclude thats evidence that we should just get rid of it outright.

FYI: The translucent background on the text makes https://www.apostrophe.org.uk/apostrophe-use hard to read.

Perhaps bump up the opacity one more notch?

How an Apostrophe Almost Landed Me in Jail:

https://mu7ami.micro.blog/2023/01/02/how-an-apostrophe.html

So the Apostrophe Protection Society is the apostrophe's protection society?

Btw, using an apostrophe to mark possessives in English is a fairly newfangled affection. So, it started off as 'wrong' not too long ago.

oh golly don't get us started on "wrong" denoting morality vs incorrect/inaccurate/imprecise!

there’dn’t’ve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZyZFa5qO0

At one point, my local dump featured a sign that read, among other things, "No Mattresse's".

I dont think theyre that important.

People care about the darnedest thing's

The backtick`s better.

That's up there with late 90s news people reading off new-fangled URLs for their viewers. "That's aytch tee tee pee colon backslash..."

It made me want to do violence at the TV.

aitch

kill the curly quote

In favor of the neutral single quote (')? Are you using a typewriter?!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com