Death of the apostrophe

November 13, 2008

Posted by Steve

Watching Newsnight last night, I was surprised by David Crystals’ views on the future of the apostrophe (after all, he’s Bangor University’s Professor of Linguistics). Responding to JP’s suggestion that it might be time to ditch this most troublesome of punctuation marks, he argued that we should avoid imposing simplistic rules on apostrophes and be more flexible instead.

Personally, I agree that apostrophes do seem to cause a lot of difficulty. At Pogo, we are often asked to edit or proofread draft copy for communications ranging from annual reports, to direct marketing, email broadcasts and website content. The pesky little apostrophe is always lurking somewhere, looking to trip up the unwary.

If course, it’s always fun to spot particularly glaring apostrophe gaffes (I know, I need to get a life). Below is a personal favourite, which I can’t help smiling at most days.

To see thousands of other unfortunate examples, it’s worth looking at flickr.com/groups/apostrophes, or at the Apostrophe Protection Society’s website. They also provide a useful reminder of the ‘rules’!

Given all this confusion, I guess it’s not surprising that some people want to do away with the apostrophe completely, just see killtheapostrophe.com.

I don’t know about you, but I think the apostrophe is important and worth keeping. After all, there are eight in this blog alone.