Good Grammar

Ashlea received this article from a friend and passed it on to me. I love the author's use of humor to communicate the importance of proper punctuation.

Are You Killing the Apostrophe? By Martha Brockenbrough

I'm pretty much anti-war. I'm especially opposed to it when it's war on punctuation -- especially on a mark as weak and defenseless as the apostrophe. The apostrophe is the only punctuation mark we have that floats by itself in midair. At least quotation marks have a buddy. The apostrophe is like that wet kitten on the "hang in there" poster, all alone in its striving. So you can only imagine what it must feel like for it to take abuse from all quarters, with no one to defend it against the snarling dogs of war. The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar objects, taking up the exclamation point as a weapon. This! is! unfair! Let us count the ways the apostrophe is under attack: On signs and statues, a member of SPOGG recently photographed a sign at a playground that said, "KIDS PLAY AREA FOR RESIDENT'S AND THEIR GUESTS ONLY." This is like a double play in the game of bad punctuation, which apparently is an international pastime, if British best-seller "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" is to be believed. Where an apostrophe was called for, after kids, none was inserted. Instead, one was shoved where it didn't belong, into resident's. Holy punctuation enema, Batman. Did Paris Hilton of the "THATS HOT" T-shirt empire have anything to do with this? These sorts of errors are all over, of course. But it gets worse. Oh yes, it gets much worse. In the halls of government, the British government has, in essence, declared war on the apostrophe. Well, OK, not the entire British government. But in Birmingham, England's second largest city, street signs will soon be without apostrophes. Journalists have reported that officials there have been sniping away at the apostrophe since the 1950s. Residents fought back for a half-century, exhorting their elected leaders to restore the apostrophes in the likes of St. Pauls Square and Acocks Green. Despite the good fight, the Birmingham Council decided to do away with the apostrophes anyway for the most stupid reasons imaginable. "Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," Councilor Martin Mullaney said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level [high school diploma] in English to find it." The first objection is laughable. St. Paul never actually owned the square. And why is St. Pauls more accurate? That only makes it sound as though you'll find multiple saints there. Not bloody likely, mate. We know England is a ways from her glory days, but we can't believe Brits would need high school diplomas to read apostrophes. We'd be willing to wager a pint of Newcastle Brown that more people will be confused by the St., which is an abbreviation for saint. Why not wage war against abbreviations? What's especially vexing is that Mullaney removed the apostrophes to end the debate. If he really wanted to end it, he would have made sure the apostrophes were correct. His move all but guaranteed eternal skirmishes between his council and members of the Apostrophe Protection Society, which is based in England and can lob language grenades without having to book trans-Atlantic passage. Have at it, apostrophe commandos. SPOGG salutes you. In the ivory tower, even this doesn't gall us quite as much as the wicked salvo launched in a 1995 issue of English Journal, where an actual English teacher named Peter Brodie called apostrophes "largely decorative." Largely decorative! As if they're some sort of trophy punctuation one hooks up with after things didn't work out with the menopausal semicolon! There we go, swinging our exclamation-point swords again! Apostrophes are no more decorative than doorways. They take the meaning of letters from one place to another. Just look at the difference between the words he'll and hell. We know which one we'd rather spend eternity contemplating. Likewise, Lassie could have saved Timmy from the well by inserting an apostrophe and turning it into we'll. •They show possession. It's the Queen's English. (Not the Queens English -- cause dat New York dialeck sounds like dis, ya know?) Just add an apostrophe plus "s" to a word and it's a possessive. To form a plural possessive, first make the plural version of the word. Chicken becomes chickens, for example. Add your apostrophe and your birds will have a chickens' coop. If a plural doesn't end in an "s," then you'll need to add an apostrophe plus "s." This fills your shelves with women's sweaters. •They also indicate contractions: This is how will not becomes won't, and cannot becomes can't. Wont and cant are different words. Decorative, schmecorative, Mr. Brodie! • They indicate missing characters. So you'd write "the '80s" when you're talking about the 1980s. Once you have these three rules down, there are just two more common errors to overcome: confusing you're with your, and it's with its. • You're is a contraction of you are. Your is a possessive. • It's is a contraction of it is or it has. Its is a possessive. See the pattern? Of course you do. Now you can go forth in defense of the poor, floating apostrophe. As William Tecumseh Sherman said, "war is hell." This is why we should all defend the one punctuation mark that can get us out of there.