Friday, March 9, 2007

Unnecessary Apostrophe's

Argh. My daughter's preschool is the latest perpetrator of the crime I think is the most serious threat to America today: using apostrophes to pluralize nouns. It killed me to do it for cutesies in the title of this post. Ainsley's school currently has a sign up on the door that reads, "We still have some parent's who have not paid their tuition this week. " This is not their first transgression. But these are the people kicking off my daughter's formal education, darn it.

I have been seeing this same error EVERYWHERE--on marquees, on news tickers, and even in print publications on a few rare occasions. People, if you're reading this, please remember that apostrophes show possession. They are not used before the s in plurals. Not even if the word ends in a vowel (which is where the random apostrophe infestation seems to be at its worst.)

Is this still being taught in elementary school? Did the rule change and I just don't know about it? Will using apostrophes to show possession become accepted just because it's so widespread and no one cares except for me and the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was reminded of this and one of your other blogs this afternoon while talking to some of my co-workers. The apostrophe thing drives me crazy (and you're right, they do it all the time in preschool fliers), but incorrect tenses annoy the heck out of me. You'd love our case tracking system, where comments like "file gave (or giving) to Jim" reign. Would it have been so hard to put the "gave" in front?! When I mentioned this to my co-workers, they looked at me like I'd gone off the deep end.