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Before today*, I didn’t know there was an Apostrophe Protection Society. But if I had, I would have been an enthusiastic supporter. I try not to be pedantic, but the thing is, apostrophes are easy. Ok, if you really get into apostrophes there is a tiny speck of controversy (see what I did there?), but almost all apostrophe use can be explained simply.
Apostrophes replace missing letters in contractions. So we have can’t, won’t and isn’t. The apostrophe in each of these words replaces the missing ‘o.’ This is often important as, for example, the words ‘cant’ and ‘wont’ do exist and they have completely different meanings. Leave out the apostrophe and you are not saying what you mean.
Apostrophes denote a possessive. Jane’s hat. John’s coat. The woman’s car. Simples. No, that’s not a word and no, it doesn’t have an apostrophe.
Apostrophes are not used in plurals. Tomatoe’s, pie’s and pasty’s (I saw this on a sign on the internet) and sport’s wear are incorrect.
Apostrophes are not needed for plural acronyms or abbreviations, or numbers. These are all incorrect: HGV’s, DVD’s, MP’s, 1970’s.
The difference between it’s and its can be learned in five minutes. It’s is a contraction of it is. Its is a possessive. We leave the apostrophe out of the possessive in this case only. So we would say ‘the dog dropped its toy.’ ‘The town has lost its charm.’ See? You never need to get them mixed up again!
Back to the Apostrophe Protection Society. I read today that this esteemed organisation is being disbanded by its (hooray!) 96 year-old founder due to lack of engagement. The Guardian reports that he said, ‘Fewer organisations and individuals are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English language.’ He put this down to ‘ignorance and laziness.’ Personally, I suspect that confusion about how to use apostrophes has its (yay!) place and it doesn’t help that we now live such rushed, distracted lives. We could easily feel that we don’t have the time to slow down and think about the niceties of precise English and we certainly don’t have the time to stop and learn about apostrophes.
There is hope, however. The Apostrophe Protection Society’s website has experienced a 600-fold increase in traffic since the announcement was made and, although the site is currently down, the webmaster intends to keep it available for the next few years.
Maybe the apostrophe is valued more than we realise. There is still time. Just imagine the English language with no apostrophes at all. How plain, how unadorned our writing would seem. In the words of Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Let’s keep the apostrophe in that sentence. And that one.
* I wrote this post for LinkedIn and Facebook on 3rd December. There was such a positive response that I decided to make it a blog post as well.
