Of the poor apostrophe, that is. Whenever I see the little punctuation mark misused, I feel terribly sorry for the sod. You know, the apostrophe can't defend itself; it relies on the writer's knowledge on how to correctly use it. But almost every day, when reading posts on fora or tweets, in blurbs of self-published books even, I see the crime of the lofty comma being maltreated. It brings tears to my eyes and makes me wonder, dear people, what has that fella ever done to you to deserve this? And I can't help thinking if the apostrophe sometimes might feel lost there, in its position it wrongly had been placed, with no fault of its own. Is it confused, sitting there, wedged between two letters it doesn't belong? Does it cry at night, silently begging to be taken away from where it had been put by a heartless person? Maybe it wishes to have arms and legs to be able to climb into the right spot.
Please, dear people, have a heart and help to stop abusing the tiny, yet important, punctuation mark.
Typical offenders:
Typo's.
No! Please do not misuse the apostrophe to indicate a plural. It's typos. One typo, two typos. Unless Typo is a person whose belonging (bike/car) you refer to.
Writer's website.
No! Unless you are referring to a single writer's website, it's writers' website.
Writer's retreat.
No! Unless it's only one writer to visit the retreat.
If you are still in doubt, take a look at this post:
Possessive apostrophe Part One
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