Holy Strawman Batman! It's actually possible to not do either of things... simultaneously. Beyond that, there is a not insignificant difference in actual meaning that the apostrophe is solely...
It's hardly worth sanctioning property damage just so people can feel superior. Lets get rid of the apostrophe.
Holy Strawman Batman!
It's actually possible to not do either of things... simultaneously. Beyond that, there is a not insignificant difference in actual meaning that the apostrophe is solely capable of expressing: take people, peoples, people's, and peoples'. If you are having difficulty with that (as the person google tells me handles ABC's style guide) then you need to find different work. Precision in reporting is crucial.
This reads like a grade schooler who still can't figure out how to utilize proper grammatical conventions and thus their teacher is always having to correct them. His arguments just sound like him...
This reads like a grade schooler who still can't figure out how to utilize proper grammatical conventions and thus their teacher is always having to correct them. His arguments just sound like him finding the most situational and pedantic scenarios that fit his thinking and going "Uh actually" with a big shit eating grin on his face, like a child might when they find a Neoseeker forum post from a user with low rep saying that their mom told them that blood is actually blue inside of our bodies.
Please don't get mad when you're corrected, people. Learn from your mistakes and corrections. Being spiteful and pressing on anyway just makes you look like an idiot who can't come to grips with being wrong. This whole "article" reeks of personal bias
For some reason there seems to be a fairly widespread sentiment where people don't want to bother learning anything. They just want to be able to continue making the same mistakes repeatedly...
For some reason there seems to be a fairly widespread sentiment where people don't want to bother learning anything. They just want to be able to continue making the same mistakes repeatedly without any pushback. It's something I've noticed from as early as middle school and has never once changed. In fact, I've known plenty of people over the years who simply have a complete and total aversion to thinking. I'm not exaggerating here, some people really just do not want to have to think. Period. Punctuation is just one of those things they don't want to have to think about.
Granted, you're entitled to continue making whatever mistakes you want, and you're also entitled to not think about things, but you don't get to insist that you're right to make those mistakes and that no one should be bothered by the inefficiencies and inconveniences you're repeatedly introducing into their processes and their lives.
Probably the most irksome of statements I see, though, is "who cares, it sounds the same when you say it out loud!" Like, do you not consider the definition of a word as you're reading? Do you not think about each word carefully to make sure you're correctly understanding the message someone is trying to communicate to you? Do you even care about what other people are trying to communicate to you, or are you just looking for your next opportunity to reply? Can you only understand a sentence if you say it to yourself out loud?
There are so many things that utterly baffle me, and the amount of resistance people give to correcting themselves is one of them.
I am a software engineer, and you cannot imagine how many nerves you have just hit.
They just want to be able to continue making the same mistakes repeatedly without any pushback. (…) In fact, I've known plenty of people over the years who simply have a complete and total aversion to thinking.
I am a software engineer, and you cannot imagine how many nerves you have just hit.
This echoes my sentiment completely. Thank you. It's one thing to walk about, completely averse to learning or correcting yourself, and I'm okay with that. But the moment those people have to work...
This echoes my sentiment completely. Thank you. It's one thing to walk about, completely averse to learning or correcting yourself, and I'm okay with that. But the moment those people have to work with other people or try to insist that they are correct in their flawed thinking to others is when they become an active and persistent detriment to all around them. IMO, the absolute worst quality anybody could have is the inability to admit fault or being incorrect. I don't associate myself with people who are unable to verbally express to others that they are incorrect. Unfortunately, that's a rather small sample size it seems
I'm slightly adverse to the ' simply because on mobile its not on the main letter screen and on desktop its right next to the enter key and has resulted in me sending messages too soon far too...
I'm slightly adverse to the ' simply because on mobile its not on the main letter screen and on desktop its right next to the enter key and has resulted in me sending messages too soon far too many times. I also just don't think it really provides much value or understanding. dont and cant are perfectly understandable and unambiguous. What is the point of the ' at all in these cases. I fully support using punctuation where it helps but I don't really like following rules just for rules sake.
Install a different keyboard? My mobile phone's keyboard has the apostrophe on the main screen. Just FYI: "cant" is an actual word. So is "wont", in case you were wondering (and I know you were!)....
I'm slightly adverse to the ' simply because on mobile its not on the main letter screen
Install a different keyboard? My mobile phone's keyboard has the apostrophe on the main screen.
dont and cant are perfectly understandable and unambiguous.
Just FYI: "cant" is an actual word. So is "wont", in case you were wondering (and I know you were!).
Then there's "we're"/"were", "it's"/"its", "I'd"/"id", "we'd"/"wed", "she'd"/"shed", "she'll"/"shell", "we'll"/"well", "he'll"/"hell". A lot of contractions are homonyms for other words.
And, if we move into possessives, we look at needing to distinguish between "birds nest", "bird's nest", and "birds' nest".
rules just for rules sake.
I have to do this: "for rules' sake". It's for the sake of rules, which makes it a possessive case.
English speakers seem to do just fine distinguishing between cant (as in tilt or lean), cant (as in knowledge), cant (as in manner of speaking), cant (as in song), and whatever other homonyms are...
Just FYI: "cant" is an actual word. So is "wont", in case you were wondering (and I know you were!).
English speakers seem to do just fine distinguishing between cant (as in tilt or lean), cant (as in knowledge), cant (as in manner of speaking), cant (as in song), and whatever other homonyms are out there that I cant think of. And all without the aid of arbitrary glyphs. Context is handy, and ambiguity can actually confer depth and richness to the use of language that pedantry often does not. Puns as a form of humor, basically rely on it. Poetry too.
I'm all for deliberately omitting grammatical conventions for the sake of a pun or gimmick, like in a poem. However, even if English speakers are good at deciphering poorly written English, it...
I'm all for deliberately omitting grammatical conventions for the sake of a pun or gimmick, like in a poem. However, even if English speakers are good at deciphering poorly written English, it doesn't mean that poorly written English should be shifted to the standard. I also believe you're giving English speakers too much credit in assuming that most people know, first of all, that cant is a word, and second, that cant has 4 homonyms. English doesn't have enough literary conventions to rely entirely on context, so things like apostrophes are vital. Just because I can understand an essay written by a 6th grade doesn't mean that I would prefer all text henceforth to be in the same style
Why not? Language evolves and natural use is going to tend towards refining it in ways that balance out the trade-offs. As long as the options are available it’s like a massive genetic algorithm...
However, even if English speakers are good at deciphering poorly written English, it doesn't mean that poorly written English should be shifted to the standard.
Why not? Language evolves and natural use is going to tend towards refining it in ways that balance out the trade-offs. As long as the options are available it’s like a massive genetic algorithm that balances convenience, fun, ambiguity, etc.
I can't condone using the "language is always evolving" argument in favor of large, radical changes, or other arbitrary things of that nature, to a language. Yes, changes or additions to a...
I can't condone using the "language is always evolving" argument in favor of large, radical changes, or other arbitrary things of that nature, to a language. Yes, changes or additions to a language are born out of necessity, but they're often done to streamline pre-existing conventions by removing one or two things. Anything else is usually classified as slang or colloquialisms insofar as creating words due to public ignorance of correct spelling/pronunciation. I wouldn't go so far as to say that just because people don't know how to use a semicolon doesn't mean that we should remove it entirely from the English language
You seem to be implying there is some kind of source of authority who makes such decisions, but there isn't. It really is just up to the vagaries of how culture uses language and how tiresome...
Yes, changes or additions to a language are born out of necessity, but they're often done to streamline pre-existing conventions by removing one or two things.
You seem to be implying there is some kind of source of authority who makes such decisions, but there isn't. It really is just up to the vagaries of how culture uses language and how tiresome pedants are willing to be when they stand athwart it.
Yes, but I don't really see English evolving to be any simpler than it is now. It's useless to say "Well we might outgrow the use of apostrophes" when we have little else to base that claim off of...
Yes, but I don't really see English evolving to be any simpler than it is now. It's useless to say "Well we might outgrow the use of apostrophes" when we have little else to base that claim off of besides the fact that language has evolved before and might evolve again. It's impossible to say how or when
It's already evolving through the use of ideographic glyphs (emoji and emoticons), strategic variances in conventions around punctuation and capitalization, etc. For example, there is a real...
but I don't really see English evolving to be any simpler than it is now.
It's already evolving through the use of ideographic glyphs (emoji and emoticons), strategic variances in conventions around punctuation and capitalization, etc.
For example, there is a real generational shift in connotation behind the use of the full stop at the end of a sentence. Using it now conveys a sense of formality and severity that it didn't used to before. Likewise, people will TyPe LiKe ThIs tO mAkE fUn Of yOu and imply you're being childish or stupid.
I wouldn't say English is becoming simpler. I'd say it's actually disposing of a lot of prescriptivist conventions to open up broader and more subtle avenues for expression. And a lot of these conventions put way more cognitive load on the reader and require a great deal more context awareness.
The fact though, that these conventions are exclusively used in text leads me to believe that these won't be very concrete changes. You can't exactly use emojis in person, and tHaT sTaGgErEd...
The fact though, that these conventions are exclusively used in text leads me to believe that these won't be very concrete changes. You can't exactly use emojis in person, and tHaT sTaGgErEd sPeEcH is just a meme, and I don't think it'll work its way into literature or essays at any point. Layman's English changes plenty on the internet, but I can't see many changes being made "officially", or as per any standard held today. I think it's very important to distinguish language on the internet and language in real life, because they're very different. Sure things like commas and apostrophes aren't exactly spoken either, but emojis and the staggered speech are derivatives of interpersonal communication, and don't really hold a special place outside of the niche of informal communication
Words are continually being added to dictionaries. "emoji", which you're bandying about quite freely, became a word only 20 years ago, but it's now included in the Oxford Dictionary. Also,...
I can't see many changes being made "officially", or as per any standard held today.
Words are continually being added to dictionaries. "emoji", which you're bandying about quite freely, became a word only 20 years ago, but it's now included in the Oxford Dictionary.
Also, yesterday's informal slang is today's common usage is tomorrow's official standard.
The apostrophe didn't exist until someone created it 500-ish years ago. And, even the use of apostrophes today to denote possession is partly a result of a series of mistakes.
Step 1: As I explain elsewhere, possession was originally denoted by adding an -es to masculine-gendered English nouns. This practice gradually spread to all nouns as English nouns lost their gender. That's incorrect usage which became widespread and then became standard.
Step 2: The -es ending was abbreviated to 's in the same way that is not was abbreviated to isn't. That's informal speech which became formalised.
Step 3: The 's ending which was only on common nouns was then added to proper nouns, such as people's names. This is more incorrect usage which became widespread and then became standard.
The very practice that this article is discussing is a combination of one original practice (the genitive case on masculine nouns) and three mistakes (masculine nouns - > all nouns; -es - > 's; non-names -> names). This current proper practice is previous informal speech.
English doesn't grow because someone invents a better way of doing things, sends their proposal to a central committee, gets approval, and then teachers start teaching it. It grows from the ground up, from people's common and informal usage.
We're not looking down the barrel of a complete grammatical overhaul like how it was with the transition from Old English to Modern English. My point of contention is the author's desire to remove...
We're not looking down the barrel of a complete grammatical overhaul like how it was with the transition from Old English to Modern English. My point of contention is the author's desire to remove a single grammatical convention because they find it redundant or inconvenient. Yes, you could probably deduce whether, given the context, "cant" was incorrectly spelled or if the author meant to use a bit more of an archaic word, but the apostrophe saves us mental gymnastics and avoids ambiguity.
Yes, we are. It took over 1,000 years for Old English to be overhauled to Modern English. But most of those changes were small and gradual. The language changed in tiny ways every day, every week,...
We're not looking down the barrel of a complete grammatical overhaul like how it was with the transition from Old English to Modern English.
And, in another 1,000 years, all those small changes will have added up to a new version of English that's just as incomprehensible to us as Beowulf is.
My point of contention is the author's desire to remove a single grammatical convention because they find it redundant or inconvenient.
Ironically, this is not how English changes. It won't be some style guide editor telling us from on high to drop apostrophes, it'll be the internet chat speak filtering up from below. Your great-great-grandchildren will think that "can't" is just as old-fashioned as you think "ye" is.
I usually find these disparagements if colloquialisms to be just a form of gussied up classism. “Formal” or “official” English is a distinct form of the language, but it’s not any more legitimate...
I think it's very important to distinguish language on the internet and language in real life, because they're very different.
I usually find these disparagements if colloquialisms to be just a form of gussied up classism. “Formal” or “official” English is a distinct form of the language, but it’s not any more legitimate or valid than any other. Style guides are modified and changed, and being as how the author of the article is literally a professional codifier of style guides, this suggests this isn’t that insane among that crowd.
I understand where you're coming from but I just can't agree. I guess I value our language as is and any attempt to streamline it any further just strikes me as change for the sake of being lazy....
I understand where you're coming from but I just can't agree. I guess I value our language as is and any attempt to streamline it any further just strikes me as change for the sake of being lazy. I understand what colloquialisms are and I get their value, but I don't want the English language to, in my eyes (ears?), be reduced to a language favored by the lazy and the unwilling to put in effort
Do you pronounce all the letters in "knight" like English speakers used to? Or do you skip over the "k" and the "gh" sounds, saying just "nyt"? That pronunciation changed because lazy people...
don't want the English language to, in my eyes (ears?), be reduced to a language favored by the lazy and the unwilling to put in effort
Do you pronounce all the letters in "knight" like English speakers used to? Or do you skip over the "k" and the "gh" sounds, saying just "nyt"? That pronunciation changed because lazy people slurred the word over centuries. If you don't want a lazy language, you should restore those elided sounds to your speech.
Octofox wrote that "dont and cant are perfectly understandable and unambiguous". "Cant" is not unambiguous when, as you point out, even the version without an apostrophe has multiple meanings....
Octofox wrote that "dont and cant are perfectly understandable and unambiguous". "Cant" is not unambiguous when, as you point out, even the version without an apostrophe has multiple meanings.
While English speakers might be good at interpreting and deciphering words like "cant", that doesn't mean the ambiguity isn't there in the first place.
I'd argue "cant" as in "cannot" is probably the least ambiguous use of the phrase. The apostrophe, in that case, doesn't add much value for clarification. All the other "cant" homonyms are much...
I'd argue "cant" as in "cannot" is probably the least ambiguous use of the phrase. The apostrophe, in that case, doesn't add much value for clarification. All the other "cant" homonyms are much more likely to cause confusion.
In many cases the ambiguity can be a feature rather than a bug. It provides fuel for all sorts of delicious puns. Auto-antonyms, like Hew or Cleave or inflammable, are particularly fun.
For some, maybe. Possibly even for most. But not for all. When I see "cant", my first response is either "it's tilted" or "they're talking funny". :/ No argument here! We seem to be talking at...
I'd argue "cant" as in "cannot" is probably the least ambiguous use of the phrase.
For some, maybe. Possibly even for most. But not for all. When I see "cant", my first response is either "it's tilted" or "they're talking funny". :/
In many cases the ambiguity can be a feature rather than a bug. It provides fuel for all sorts of delicious puns.
No argument here!
We seem to be talking at cross purposes, here. I'm presenting facts, and you're presenting opinions. I'm saying "Cant has multiple meanings", and you're saying "I like that cant has multiple meanings". I'm not opining about whether homonyms are a good thing or a bad thing; I'm merely reporting their existence.
The apostrophe is still very much important in those cases. There are people who may not be exposed to certain contractions of words, and knowing that the apostrophe can signify the contraction...
The apostrophe is still very much important in those cases. There are people who may not be exposed to certain contractions of words, and knowing that the apostrophe can signify the contraction with omission of letters can alleviate confusion.
The greatest beneficiaries of grammatical constructs are those who are still learning. We can't forget about them.
The author, Tiger Webb, seems to be a professional writer who is responsible for codifying linguistic conventions and style guides. It is very likely he has a background in English or Linguistics....
The author, Tiger Webb, seems to be a professional writer who is responsible for codifying linguistic conventions and style guides. It is very likely he has a background in English or Linguistics. So technically, it is he who is the teacher and is probably frustrated with his charges having trouble grasping proper apostrophe use.
If you're in charge of standardizing language conventions for a company or organization, your whole job is to think through all the situational and pedantic scenarios that might impact your decisions about things like using a serial comma.
I'm disappointed by some of the comments in this thread. Not that I disagree with the sentiments, but a lot of the replies here don't consider the article and quickly turn into ad hominem attacks,...
Exemplary
I'm disappointed by some of the comments in this thread. Not that I disagree with the sentiments, but a lot of the replies here don't consider the article and quickly turn into ad hominem attacks, or outright refusal of the headline without consideration of the article. I think what irks me the most is that this article is actually referencing some interesting sources, including experts on the English language, and people are instead countering with what amounts to their own feelings. It's really a huge missed opportunity to discuss why many prominent writers and lexicographers are so anti-apostrophe.
That said, this article makes me feel pretty incensed, admittedly. I don't like the argument at all, and I'm pretty sure the author didn't even read many of the sources. The more I read it, the more I'm pretty sure the author only did a quick search for sentences that agreed with him but didn't read the whole source to find out why referencing them may be a bad idea for his argument.
So, the article itself is a poorly-researched mess that uses a ton of cherrypicked examples to form a narrative that is easily disproved. It sets a conclusion out from the start and then only seeks to justify it. It does not present a good argument for either side of this supposed apostrophe debate and show why the anti side might be better. A few of these sources are a bit silly too.
Let's start with "just look at a map" in terms of dropping an apostrophe. I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Flinders Ranges to check out the history of its name and quickly found the still-apostrophied Goyder's Line. If the apostrophes were largely dropped due to an emergency response system's way of parsing information quickly, and words that end in apostrophes gum it up.... well, I just don't think that's a good enough reason to drop the possessive apostrophes from place names. Especially not when ones that end with "'s" are still kicking around. And frankly, I wouldn't base punctuation rules of language on the results of government-procured software.
This article is completely omitting why the apostrophe was borrowed in the first place, and why it only got more widely used over time. The apostrophe didn't need to do anything, and yet people felt it did so much that it only rose in prominence and use to the point where "it is a blunt fact that the incorrect use of apostrophes will make your writing look illiterate more quickly than almost any other kind of mistake."
Wondering where that quote came from? Well, none other than this article's own source: RL Trask! Here's the full intro from The Penguin Guide to Punctuation regarding apostrophes:
The apostrophe (') is the most troublesome punctuation mark in English, and perhaps also the least useful. No other punctuation mark causes so much bewilderment, or is so often misused. On the one hand, shops offer * pizza's, * video's, * greeting's cards and * ladie's clothing; on the other, they offer * childrens shoes and * artists supplies. The confusion about apostrophes is so great, in comparison with the small amount of useful work they perform, that many distinguished writers and linguists have argued that the best way of eliminating the confusion would be to get rid of this troublesome squiggle altogether and never use it at all.
They are probably right, but unfortunately the apostrophe has not been abolished yet, and it is a blunt fact that the incorrect use of apostrophes will make your writing look illiterate more quickly than almost any other kind of mistake. I'm afraid, therefore, that, if you find apostrophes difficult, you will just have to grit your teeth and get down to work.
He calls it troublesome because it is used more inconsistently and more discretely than other marks, and is harder to understand when learning the language when you run into exceptions. Throughout this chapter on apostrophes, he goes over why it's also an indispensable punctuation mark in some situations where some text could be totally illegible as a result.
Writers are a bad benchmark for linguistics too. The bit about how Shakespeare, back in the Early Modern era, spelled it differently is just ridiculous. Spelling was not prioritized at all by the Elizabethean society, to the point where Shakespeare spelled his own name differently in a number of variations! Do we really want to use his imprecise Early Modern English spellings from his casually scrawled original scripts as the basis of Modern English punctuation? This applies to any writer, many of them were absolutely awful spellers. I'm not going to support changing how words are spelled because James Joyce couldn't be assed to open a dictionary during those hours he'd spend poring over a single sentence. It's the editors who are the real experts here. Reading some of these great writers' original manuscripts is akin to "don't meet your heroes".
I don't think appealing to the confusing origins of the punctuation mark yields a strong argument for its disposal. If we apply that logic more widely, we might as well strip out almost the entire English language. The letter s might as well go back to ſ while we're at it. The English language adopted, implemented, and continuously iterated on the use of it until we have it down to a specific, clear use as outlined in... well, in the very same source that was used earlier: The Penguin Guide to Punctuation. The argument of "it's confusing when learning" just isn't good enough. Let's agree to drop the apostrophe when French drops gendered nouns, since that's far more confusing for a new language learner and yet is still a basic part of that language.
Also, a lot of the people cited for support are taken a bit out of context. The bit about Robert Burchfield is presented with a different context than it was originally stated with. Geoffrey Pullum flat out states that he still uses the apostrophe and will not argue for its removal from the language, even though he also would not miss its disappearance. Both these people are also only talking about it being dropped in broad strokes, like in company names, when they say there would be no issue with dropping it. Trask is the only one of the sources (under the anti-apostrophe category) who goes into so much detail about the use of the apostrophe that he finds situations where it would be disastrous to eliminate it.
To close this out, I find it suspect that we're not told what the misuse of apostrophes that was called out was at the beginning of the article. Was the reader wrong, or was the ABC wrong? What happened? I'm curious to know because I feel like the use of apostrophes, while inconsistent and not as natural as every other mark, is pretty close to being down to a science now. This is not a þ situation, this is not an ae situation (e.g. archaeology), this is not even a who/whom situation. Apostrophe usage is pretty cut and dry, and this article feels like it's forcing a conclusion and ignoring all the evidence otherwise.
To be completely honest, I don't believe that this article was born from much of anything except a slow news day and the author having a particularly bad day. I don't believe that he read as much...
To be completely honest, I don't believe that this article was born from much of anything except a slow news day and the author having a particularly bad day. I don't believe that he read as much into his article as you have
The author thinks otherwise, but this is an argument for keeping the apostrophe because those names mean different things. Melbourne Writers Festival means a generic "writers festival" that happen...
A similar apostrophic absence is underway in the names of organisations, where we have Melbourne Writers Festival but Sydney Writers' Festival
The author thinks otherwise, but this is an argument for keeping the apostrophe because those names mean different things. Melbourne Writers Festival means a generic "writers festival" that happen to be in Melbourne, but Sydney Writers' Festival means a festival in Sydney by Sydney writers. From the name alone, it doesn't even have to be about writing at all, just that it's organized by writers.
"Get rid of apostrophes!" is a prime example of the lazy, gratuitously provocative click-bait writing which currently passes for journalistic enterprise. There's a minimal investment in what...
"Get rid of apostrophes!" is a prime example of the lazy, gratuitously provocative click-bait writing which currently passes for journalistic enterprise. There's a minimal investment in what amounts to a Google search on the history of the apostrophe, no current interviews, and a significant quantity of whining.
Pick a style guide, pay for editors to utilize it, and let the readers move on with their lives.
It's noteworthy that the author is a researcher for ABC, and it's likely that this is simply a filler article gleaned from the slush pile of other research on matters of greater import.
It probably took the author significantly longer to write this article than it would have taken to run word spelling check on his other articles. Or even to setup word to automatically add in...
It probably took the author significantly longer to write this article than it would have taken to run word spelling check on his other articles. Or even to setup word to automatically add in apostrophes where needed. Definitely lazy.
I'm only OK with this if it means we widely adopt the interrobang. One out, one in, it's the only way it's fair. More on the delightful oddity that is the interrobang:...
I'm only OK with this if it means we widely adopt the interrobang. One out, one in, it's the only way it's fair.
The bang alternative way of saying 'exclamation mark' is what got us the shebang in scripting languages too, which has led to any number of punny situations over the years. - +1 for the interrobang.
The bang alternative way of saying 'exclamation mark' is what got us the shebang in scripting languages too, which has led to any number of punny situations over the years. - +1 for the interrobang.
I say we stop hiring the bad man trying to take away our apostrophes. Forcing language to be less precise literally kills people. If we're wanting to go really dramatic: remember the 1984 approach...
I say we stop hiring the bad man trying to take away our apostrophes.
Forcing language to be less precise literally kills people. If we're wanting to go really dramatic: remember the 1984 approach to language?
I'm genuinely amazed at how easily I could process that! It shouldn't work! Our brains really are amazing. (In case anyone's left wondering, it's "You could even do both at the same time.")
I'm genuinely amazed at how easily I could process that! It shouldn't work! Our brains really are amazing.
(In case anyone's left wondering, it's "You could even do both at the same time.")
Instead of abolishing the apostrophe, I would vote for abolishing people correcting others' grammar/spelling/definitions. Languages have always been evolving in both written and spoken usage, and...
Instead of abolishing the apostrophe, I would vote for abolishing people correcting others' grammar/spelling/definitions.
Languages have always been evolving in both written and spoken usage, and I think it's silly how it's considered sacrilege to misspell something, use crappy grammar, or make up a word. While I think clarity in journalism might be a decent argument for sticking to a style guide for the particular writer in question, I think everyone else can be pretty free to throw their apostrophe usage out the window if they so desire.
Not really? "It's" is a contraction and "its" is similar to "yours" or "his" or "hers". You typically only add the possessive apostrophe to nouns, including proper nouns. The word "it" is neither...
Also the rules for "its" and "it's" are bad.
Not really? "It's" is a contraction and "its" is similar to "yours" or "his" or "hers". You typically only add the possessive apostrophe to nouns, including proper nouns. The word "it" is neither of those, so you don't indicate possession in the same manner. The word "its" instead falls under the categories of "possessive determiner" and "possessive pronoun", depending on context.
The grammar rules are actually pretty simple here. The problem is perhaps that your teachers never clarified the point of only modifying nouns with the apostrophe.
I understand the rules, I just think they're bad. Here's an example: "The bear's eating a fish." [contraction] "The bear's coat is brown." [possessive] "It's eating a fish." [contraction] "Its...
I understand the rules, I just think they're bad. Here's an example:
"The bear's eating a fish." [contraction]
"The bear's coat is brown." [possessive]
"It's eating a fish." [contraction]
"Its coat is brown." [possessive]
"That one's eating a fish." [contraction]
"That one's coat is brown." [possessive]
It might interest you to know that the possessive apostrophe is just a special case of the contractive apostrophe. In Ye Olden Days, possessives in English were formed by adding an "-es" suffix to...
It might interest you to know that the possessive apostrophe is just a special case of the contractive apostrophe.
In Ye Olden Days, possessives in English were formed by adding an "-es" suffix to words. For example, the nest belonging to a bird was "the birdes nest". This comes from the Old English genetive case for masculine and neuter nouns, which, in Middle English, with the loss of gendered nouns, was generalised to all nouns.
Over time, "birdes nest" was contracted to "bird's nest" in exactly the same way that "can not" was contracted to "can't" and "it is" was contracted to "it's". English is chock-full of contracted words and elided sounds (we don't pronounce all the letters in "knight" any more!). So, the possessive apostrophe is just another contractive apostrophe - except that most people these days don't know what the missing letter is, like they do with other contractions.
Holy Strawman Batman!
It's actually possible to not do either of things... simultaneously. Beyond that, there is a not insignificant difference in actual meaning that the apostrophe is solely capable of expressing: take people, peoples, people's, and peoples'. If you are having difficulty with that (as the person google tells me handles ABC's style guide) then you need to find different work. Precision in reporting is crucial.
This reads like a grade schooler who still can't figure out how to utilize proper grammatical conventions and thus their teacher is always having to correct them. His arguments just sound like him finding the most situational and pedantic scenarios that fit his thinking and going "Uh actually" with a big shit eating grin on his face, like a child might when they find a Neoseeker forum post from a user with low rep saying that their mom told them that blood is actually blue inside of our bodies.
Please don't get mad when you're corrected, people. Learn from your mistakes and corrections. Being spiteful and pressing on anyway just makes you look like an idiot who can't come to grips with being wrong. This whole "article" reeks of personal bias
For some reason there seems to be a fairly widespread sentiment where people don't want to bother learning anything. They just want to be able to continue making the same mistakes repeatedly without any pushback. It's something I've noticed from as early as middle school and has never once changed. In fact, I've known plenty of people over the years who simply have a complete and total aversion to thinking. I'm not exaggerating here, some people really just do not want to have to think. Period. Punctuation is just one of those things they don't want to have to think about.
Granted, you're entitled to continue making whatever mistakes you want, and you're also entitled to not think about things, but you don't get to insist that you're right to make those mistakes and that no one should be bothered by the inefficiencies and inconveniences you're repeatedly introducing into their processes and their lives.
Probably the most irksome of statements I see, though, is "who cares, it sounds the same when you say it out loud!" Like, do you not consider the definition of a word as you're reading? Do you not think about each word carefully to make sure you're correctly understanding the message someone is trying to communicate to you? Do you even care about what other people are trying to communicate to you, or are you just looking for your next opportunity to reply? Can you only understand a sentence if you say it to yourself out loud?
There are so many things that utterly baffle me, and the amount of resistance people give to correcting themselves is one of them.
I am a software engineer, and you cannot imagine how many nerves you have just hit.
I'm also a programmer. I can definitely imagine.
This echoes my sentiment completely. Thank you. It's one thing to walk about, completely averse to learning or correcting yourself, and I'm okay with that. But the moment those people have to work with other people or try to insist that they are correct in their flawed thinking to others is when they become an active and persistent detriment to all around them. IMO, the absolute worst quality anybody could have is the inability to admit fault or being incorrect. I don't associate myself with people who are unable to verbally express to others that they are incorrect. Unfortunately, that's a rather small sample size it seems
I'm slightly adverse to the ' simply because on mobile its not on the main letter screen and on desktop its right next to the enter key and has resulted in me sending messages too soon far too many times. I also just don't think it really provides much value or understanding. dont and cant are perfectly understandable and unambiguous. What is the point of the ' at all in these cases. I fully support using punctuation where it helps but I don't really like following rules just for rules sake.
Install a different keyboard? My mobile phone's keyboard has the apostrophe on the main screen.
Just FYI: "cant" is an actual word. So is "wont", in case you were wondering (and I know you were!).
Then there's "we're"/"were", "it's"/"its", "I'd"/"id", "we'd"/"wed", "she'd"/"shed", "she'll"/"shell", "we'll"/"well", "he'll"/"hell". A lot of contractions are homonyms for other words.
And, if we move into possessives, we look at needing to distinguish between "birds nest", "bird's nest", and "birds' nest".
I have to do this: "for rules' sake". It's for the sake of rules, which makes it a possessive case.
EDIT: One too many apostrophes! (Ironic.)
English speakers seem to do just fine distinguishing between cant (as in tilt or lean), cant (as in knowledge), cant (as in manner of speaking), cant (as in song), and whatever other homonyms are out there that I cant think of. And all without the aid of arbitrary glyphs. Context is handy, and ambiguity can actually confer depth and richness to the use of language that pedantry often does not. Puns as a form of humor, basically rely on it. Poetry too.
I'm all for deliberately omitting grammatical conventions for the sake of a pun or gimmick, like in a poem. However, even if English speakers are good at deciphering poorly written English, it doesn't mean that poorly written English should be shifted to the standard. I also believe you're giving English speakers too much credit in assuming that most people know, first of all, that cant is a word, and second, that cant has 4 homonyms. English doesn't have enough literary conventions to rely entirely on context, so things like apostrophes are vital. Just because I can understand an essay written by a 6th grade doesn't mean that I would prefer all text henceforth to be in the same style
Why not? Language evolves and natural use is going to tend towards refining it in ways that balance out the trade-offs. As long as the options are available it’s like a massive genetic algorithm that balances convenience, fun, ambiguity, etc.
I can't condone using the "language is always evolving" argument in favor of large, radical changes, or other arbitrary things of that nature, to a language. Yes, changes or additions to a language are born out of necessity, but they're often done to streamline pre-existing conventions by removing one or two things. Anything else is usually classified as slang or colloquialisms insofar as creating words due to public ignorance of correct spelling/pronunciation. I wouldn't go so far as to say that just because people don't know how to use a semicolon doesn't mean that we should remove it entirely from the English language
You seem to be implying there is some kind of source of authority who makes such decisions, but there isn't. It really is just up to the vagaries of how culture uses language and how tiresome pedants are willing to be when they stand athwart it.
Yes, but I don't really see English evolving to be any simpler than it is now. It's useless to say "Well we might outgrow the use of apostrophes" when we have little else to base that claim off of besides the fact that language has evolved before and might evolve again. It's impossible to say how or when
It's already evolving through the use of ideographic glyphs (emoji and emoticons), strategic variances in conventions around punctuation and capitalization, etc.
For example, there is a real generational shift in connotation behind the use of the full stop at the end of a sentence. Using it now conveys a sense of formality and severity that it didn't used to before. Likewise, people will TyPe LiKe ThIs tO mAkE fUn Of yOu and imply you're being childish or stupid.
I wouldn't say English is becoming simpler. I'd say it's actually disposing of a lot of prescriptivist conventions to open up broader and more subtle avenues for expression. And a lot of these conventions put way more cognitive load on the reader and require a great deal more context awareness.
The fact though, that these conventions are exclusively used in text leads me to believe that these won't be very concrete changes. You can't exactly use emojis in person, and tHaT sTaGgErEd sPeEcH is just a meme, and I don't think it'll work its way into literature or essays at any point. Layman's English changes plenty on the internet, but I can't see many changes being made "officially", or as per any standard held today. I think it's very important to distinguish language on the internet and language in real life, because they're very different. Sure things like commas and apostrophes aren't exactly spoken either, but emojis and the staggered speech are derivatives of interpersonal communication, and don't really hold a special place outside of the niche of informal communication
Words are continually being added to dictionaries. "emoji", which you're bandying about quite freely, became a word only 20 years ago, but it's now included in the Oxford Dictionary.
Also, yesterday's informal slang is today's common usage is tomorrow's official standard.
The apostrophe didn't exist until someone created it 500-ish years ago. And, even the use of apostrophes today to denote possession is partly a result of a series of mistakes.
Step 1: As I explain elsewhere, possession was originally denoted by adding an -es to masculine-gendered English nouns. This practice gradually spread to all nouns as English nouns lost their gender. That's incorrect usage which became widespread and then became standard.
Step 2: The -es ending was abbreviated to 's in the same way that is not was abbreviated to isn't. That's informal speech which became formalised.
Step 3: The 's ending which was only on common nouns was then added to proper nouns, such as people's names. This is more incorrect usage which became widespread and then became standard.
The very practice that this article is discussing is a combination of one original practice (the genitive case on masculine nouns) and three mistakes (masculine nouns - > all nouns; -es - > 's; non-names -> names). This current proper practice is previous informal speech.
English doesn't grow because someone invents a better way of doing things, sends their proposal to a central committee, gets approval, and then teachers start teaching it. It grows from the ground up, from people's common and informal usage.
We're not looking down the barrel of a complete grammatical overhaul like how it was with the transition from Old English to Modern English. My point of contention is the author's desire to remove a single grammatical convention because they find it redundant or inconvenient. Yes, you could probably deduce whether, given the context, "cant" was incorrectly spelled or if the author meant to use a bit more of an archaic word, but the apostrophe saves us mental gymnastics and avoids ambiguity.
Yes, we are.
It took over 1,000 years for Old English to be overhauled to Modern English. But most of those changes were small and gradual. The language changed in tiny ways every day, every week, every month, every year. Some changes stuck, some changes didn't. The changes that stuck led to other small changes. And so on. It was a long slow gradual process. "Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon." didn't become "Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!" in one fell swoop. It was a letter here, a dipthong there, a verb tense here, a new word there, over centuries. Bit by bit, piece by piece - like biological evolution.
And, in another 1,000 years, all those small changes will have added up to a new version of English that's just as incomprehensible to us as Beowulf is.
Ironically, this is not how English changes. It won't be some style guide editor telling us from on high to drop apostrophes, it'll be the internet chat speak filtering up from below. Your great-great-grandchildren will think that "can't" is just as old-fashioned as you think "ye" is.
EDIT: Formatting.
I usually find these disparagements if colloquialisms to be just a form of gussied up classism. “Formal” or “official” English is a distinct form of the language, but it’s not any more legitimate or valid than any other. Style guides are modified and changed, and being as how the author of the article is literally a professional codifier of style guides, this suggests this isn’t that insane among that crowd.
I understand where you're coming from but I just can't agree. I guess I value our language as is and any attempt to streamline it any further just strikes me as change for the sake of being lazy. I understand what colloquialisms are and I get their value, but I don't want the English language to, in my eyes (ears?), be reduced to a language favored by the lazy and the unwilling to put in effort
Do you pronounce all the letters in "knight" like English speakers used to? Or do you skip over the "k" and the "gh" sounds, saying just "nyt"? That pronunciation changed because lazy people slurred the word over centuries. If you don't want a lazy language, you should restore those elided sounds to your speech.
Alright dude fine, I concede.
Octofox wrote that "dont and cant are perfectly understandable and unambiguous". "Cant" is not unambiguous when, as you point out, even the version without an apostrophe has multiple meanings.
While English speakers might be good at interpreting and deciphering words like "cant", that doesn't mean the ambiguity isn't there in the first place.
I'd argue "cant" as in "cannot" is probably the least ambiguous use of the phrase. The apostrophe, in that case, doesn't add much value for clarification. All the other "cant" homonyms are much more likely to cause confusion.
In many cases the ambiguity can be a feature rather than a bug. It provides fuel for all sorts of delicious puns. Auto-antonyms, like Hew or Cleave or inflammable, are particularly fun.
For some, maybe. Possibly even for most. But not for all. When I see "cant", my first response is either "it's tilted" or "they're talking funny". :/
No argument here!
We seem to be talking at cross purposes, here. I'm presenting facts, and you're presenting opinions. I'm saying "Cant has multiple meanings", and you're saying "I like that cant has multiple meanings". I'm not opining about whether homonyms are a good thing or a bad thing; I'm merely reporting their existence.
Interesting. I consider myself slightly more educated now.
The apostrophe is still very much important in those cases. There are people who may not be exposed to certain contractions of words, and knowing that the apostrophe can signify the contraction with omission of letters can alleviate confusion.
The greatest beneficiaries of grammatical constructs are those who are still learning. We can't forget about them.
The author, Tiger Webb, seems to be a professional writer who is responsible for codifying linguistic conventions and style guides. It is very likely he has a background in English or Linguistics. So technically, it is he who is the teacher and is probably frustrated with his charges having trouble grasping proper apostrophe use.
If you're in charge of standardizing language conventions for a company or organization, your whole job is to think through all the situational and pedantic scenarios that might impact your decisions about things like using a serial comma.
I'm disappointed by some of the comments in this thread. Not that I disagree with the sentiments, but a lot of the replies here don't consider the article and quickly turn into ad hominem attacks, or outright refusal of the headline without consideration of the article. I think what irks me the most is that this article is actually referencing some interesting sources, including experts on the English language, and people are instead countering with what amounts to their own feelings. It's really a huge missed opportunity to discuss why many prominent writers and lexicographers are so anti-apostrophe.
That said, this article makes me feel pretty incensed, admittedly. I don't like the argument at all, and I'm pretty sure the author didn't even read many of the sources. The more I read it, the more I'm pretty sure the author only did a quick search for sentences that agreed with him but didn't read the whole source to find out why referencing them may be a bad idea for his argument.
So, the article itself is a poorly-researched mess that uses a ton of cherrypicked examples to form a narrative that is easily disproved. It sets a conclusion out from the start and then only seeks to justify it. It does not present a good argument for either side of this supposed apostrophe debate and show why the anti side might be better. A few of these sources are a bit silly too.
Let's start with "just look at a map" in terms of dropping an apostrophe. I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Flinders Ranges to check out the history of its name and quickly found the still-apostrophied Goyder's Line. If the apostrophes were largely dropped due to an emergency response system's way of parsing information quickly, and words that end in apostrophes gum it up.... well, I just don't think that's a good enough reason to drop the possessive apostrophes from place names. Especially not when ones that end with "'s" are still kicking around. And frankly, I wouldn't base punctuation rules of language on the results of government-procured software.
This article is completely omitting why the apostrophe was borrowed in the first place, and why it only got more widely used over time. The apostrophe didn't need to do anything, and yet people felt it did so much that it only rose in prominence and use to the point where "it is a blunt fact that the incorrect use of apostrophes will make your writing look illiterate more quickly than almost any other kind of mistake."
Wondering where that quote came from? Well, none other than this article's own source: RL Trask! Here's the full intro from The Penguin Guide to Punctuation regarding apostrophes:
He calls it troublesome because it is used more inconsistently and more discretely than other marks, and is harder to understand when learning the language when you run into exceptions. Throughout this chapter on apostrophes, he goes over why it's also an indispensable punctuation mark in some situations where some text could be totally illegible as a result.
Writers are a bad benchmark for linguistics too. The bit about how Shakespeare, back in the Early Modern era, spelled it differently is just ridiculous. Spelling was not prioritized at all by the Elizabethean society, to the point where Shakespeare spelled his own name differently in a number of variations! Do we really want to use his imprecise Early Modern English spellings from his casually scrawled original scripts as the basis of Modern English punctuation? This applies to any writer, many of them were absolutely awful spellers. I'm not going to support changing how words are spelled because James Joyce couldn't be assed to open a dictionary during those hours he'd spend poring over a single sentence. It's the editors who are the real experts here. Reading some of these great writers' original manuscripts is akin to "don't meet your heroes".
I don't think appealing to the confusing origins of the punctuation mark yields a strong argument for its disposal. If we apply that logic more widely, we might as well strip out almost the entire English language. The letter s might as well go back to ſ while we're at it. The English language adopted, implemented, and continuously iterated on the use of it until we have it down to a specific, clear use as outlined in... well, in the very same source that was used earlier: The Penguin Guide to Punctuation. The argument of "it's confusing when learning" just isn't good enough. Let's agree to drop the apostrophe when French drops gendered nouns, since that's far more confusing for a new language learner and yet is still a basic part of that language.
Also, a lot of the people cited for support are taken a bit out of context. The bit about Robert Burchfield is presented with a different context than it was originally stated with. Geoffrey Pullum flat out states that he still uses the apostrophe and will not argue for its removal from the language, even though he also would not miss its disappearance. Both these people are also only talking about it being dropped in broad strokes, like in company names, when they say there would be no issue with dropping it. Trask is the only one of the sources (under the anti-apostrophe category) who goes into so much detail about the use of the apostrophe that he finds situations where it would be disastrous to eliminate it.
To close this out, I find it suspect that we're not told what the misuse of apostrophes that was called out was at the beginning of the article. Was the reader wrong, or was the ABC wrong? What happened? I'm curious to know because I feel like the use of apostrophes, while inconsistent and not as natural as every other mark, is pretty close to being down to a science now. This is not a þ situation, this is not an ae situation (e.g. archaeology), this is not even a who/whom situation. Apostrophe usage is pretty cut and dry, and this article feels like it's forcing a conclusion and ignoring all the evidence otherwise.
To be completely honest, I don't believe that this article was born from much of anything except a slow news day and the author having a particularly bad day. I don't believe that he read as much into his article as you have
The author thinks otherwise, but this is an argument for keeping the apostrophe because those names mean different things. Melbourne Writers Festival means a generic "writers festival" that happen to be in Melbourne, but Sydney Writers' Festival means a festival in Sydney by Sydney writers. From the name alone, it doesn't even have to be about writing at all, just that it's organized by writers.
"Get rid of apostrophes!" is a prime example of the lazy, gratuitously provocative click-bait writing which currently passes for journalistic enterprise. There's a minimal investment in what amounts to a Google search on the history of the apostrophe, no current interviews, and a significant quantity of whining.
Pick a style guide, pay for editors to utilize it, and let the readers move on with their lives.
It's noteworthy that the author is a researcher for ABC, and it's likely that this is simply a filler article gleaned from the slush pile of other research on matters of greater import.
I have no issues with the natural evolution of language. In good times, divergences in punctuation lead to greater precision and flexibility, provided that the meaning is agreed upon and nuance is maintained.
In bad times, stripping out irregularities and imposing simplified standards which eliminate subtle distinctions has ominous authoritarian overtones.
It probably took the author significantly longer to write this article than it would have taken to run word spelling check on his other articles. Or even to setup word to automatically add in apostrophes where needed. Definitely lazy.
I'm only OK with this if it means we widely adopt the interrobang. One out, one in, it's the only way it's fair.
More on the delightful oddity that is the interrobang:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang
The bang alternative way of saying 'exclamation mark' is what got us the shebang in scripting languages too, which has led to any number of punny situations over the years. - +1 for the interrobang.
Oh yay I didn't know that!
I say we stop hiring the bad man trying to take away our apostrophes.
Forcing language to be less precise literally kills people. If we're wanting to go really dramatic: remember the 1984 approach to language?
Ifyouregoingtogetridofapostropheswhynotgoallthewaybacktoscripturacontinuaandgetridofthespacestoo?
Hlel yuu dnot eevn need to wirte prpoelry the bairn raerrnaegs hte lteters wehn raeindg.
For those that struggled with the second part of this sentence (I know I did) it says "the brain rearranges the letters when reading".
Uoyocudlveendohbotathetasemtmie.
I'm genuinely amazed at how easily I could process that! It shouldn't work! Our brains really are amazing.
(In case anyone's left wondering, it's "You could even do both at the same time.")
fyrgngtgtrdfpstrphswhyntgllthwybckthbrwndgtrdfthspcstndvwlsndqstnmrks
if you are going to get rid of the spaces why not go all the way back to hebrew and get rid of the spaces too
Instead of abolishing the apostrophe, I would vote for abolishing people correcting others' grammar/spelling/definitions.
Languages have always been evolving in both written and spoken usage, and I think it's silly how it's considered sacrilege to misspell something, use crappy grammar, or make up a word. While I think clarity in journalism might be a decent argument for sticking to a style guide for the particular writer in question, I think everyone else can be pretty free to throw their apostrophe usage out the window if they so desire.
Also the rules for "its" and "it's" are bad.
Not really? "It's" is a contraction and "its" is similar to "yours" or "his" or "hers". You typically only add the possessive apostrophe to nouns, including proper nouns. The word "it" is neither of those, so you don't indicate possession in the same manner. The word "its" instead falls under the categories of "possessive determiner" and "possessive pronoun", depending on context.
The grammar rules are actually pretty simple here. The problem is perhaps that your teachers never clarified the point of only modifying nouns with the apostrophe.
I understand the rules, I just think they're bad. Here's an example:
"The bear's eating a fish." [contraction]
"The bear's coat is brown." [possessive]
"It's eating a fish." [contraction]
"Its coat is brown." [possessive]
"That one's eating a fish." [contraction]
"That one's coat is brown." [possessive]
It might interest you to know that the possessive apostrophe is just a special case of the contractive apostrophe.
In Ye Olden Days, possessives in English were formed by adding an "-es" suffix to words. For example, the nest belonging to a bird was "the birdes nest". This comes from the Old English genetive case for masculine and neuter nouns, which, in Middle English, with the loss of gendered nouns, was generalised to all nouns.
Over time, "birdes nest" was contracted to "bird's nest" in exactly the same way that "can not" was contracted to "can't" and "it is" was contracted to "it's". English is chock-full of contracted words and elided sounds (we don't pronounce all the letters in "knight" any more!). So, the possessive apostrophe is just another contractive apostrophe - except that most people these days don't know what the missing letter is, like they do with other contractions.
Best part of the article is the end
😂
I have requested it. I will keep you posted. Stay tuned.
He sent it via attachment!
Haha that's fantastic.