The Apostrophe '

I will claim that my 'wink' was my full stop!

No, but a full stop one is!!

SO glad dorsetpennt started this thread I have to resist the urge to correct posts on forums all the time. That would not make me popular!
My daughters call me the grammar police, and I happily admit to being pedantic about both grammar and spelling.
I am also guilty of rubbing out or correcting errors on anything I can get my hands on - including notice boards in school staffrooms (and that I find shocking)
Let's make an effort to raise awareness and thereby (hopefully) standards!

And I do confess to using too many exclamation marks!! Just in case an exclamation mark pedant is reading

Joan, I can't even remember what my adolescent brain looked like. Think it must have had a few leaky bits.

Yes, of course it is irritating. You use amount for one thing, and number for more than one. Hence, for example, the amount of mashed potato and the number of potatoes.

Back to apostrophes - it is potatoes not potato's

Those of us who had the rules of grammar hammered into our adolescent brains have to accept that if we had not been lucky enough to have been properly taught, we could well be getting it all wrong ourselves.

I love our language, I love the way it evolved from two distinct languages giving us such a wide vocabulary. I love the way we can stick to the more earthy, Germanic Anglo Saxon side of the language when we want to show we really mean what we say, or we can revert to the more airy fairy Norman French side, when we want to sound posh or superficial. Churchill stuck to the Anglo Saxon words in his 'We will fight them on the beaches' speech: the only Norman French word was 'surrender' as in 'we will never.'

I know this is the apostrophe thread, but can I complain here about the ever more used phrase "amount of people"? Does anyone else find this very irritating?

How about 'What is this thing called love?'
'What is this thing called, love?'

That's brilliant, gracesmum, you've summed up the importance of puctuation in two short sentences!

PS I recently got on an email "Let's eat, Granny!" and "Let's eat Granny!" - who says punctuation is irrelevant??

Oh yes!! Don't get me started!!! I too have tried to rub it out - sometimes very messily- and seethed with Victor Meldrew-like frustration. As a recently retired Languages teacher I also enjoy (!) finding mistakes in the French at Cafe Rouge and recently outside a new and very chic lingerie shop in the process of fitting out called "Voulez Vous" pointed out to the proud owners that a) there should be a hyphen and b) the second "v" should be lower case. As the windows were being painted with the new name that went down like a cup of cold sick as I passed on my self-righteous way!! You can take the woman out of the school but..... you know the rest!

..eats shoots and leaves....

Bag's and Em '''''

Pedantry is a strength in certain circumstances. Grammar is one of them. Go for it, em!

Gally - loved that post! It just shows we don't have to take grammar etc desperately seriously, but equally, don't have to dismiss those who admit to being 'picky' as pedantic persecutors!

I LOVE the word apostrophe and I LOVE apostrophes even more if they are in the correct place but they can be difficult wee blighters however hard one trie's (!) .
Em I think you should start a sunday morning English class for those of us who are confused - I used to love parsing, but I do get my adjectives muddled up with those other thingies and you-know-whatties and whether they come before or after the thingamejigs or not

Apostrophes and other points of grammar and syntax exist to make communication easier. A badly-constructed sentence is more difficult for the reader to understand. If punctuation is missing or inaccurate, a reader may have to re-read and decipher the meaning before 'getting the point'. If 2 or 3 sentences are run together without full stops, it is simply harder to understand and the reader may end up dismissing a valid point in a discussion. In a context like this one, the communication of ideas and opinions is, of course, far more important than scoring grammar points. However the ideas which are easiest to grasp are very often those which are correctly written. For instance, it isn't too difficult just to pause in our writing and ask ourselves if an apostrophe is really needed or has it just become a habit to insert one whenever we see a letter 's'. Or to read what we've written before posting to check if a full stop or two might make things clearer. I feel that attempting to present writing grammatically is a courtesy to readers and shouldn't be dismissed as pedantic.

It does glamma

Its what you say that counts.

DHs boss year's ago could not string two sentence's to-gether correctly but the same man was the most clever person you could ever meet,he was the Head of operation's of a massive company who could do everything in his head but had a problem putting down on paper his thought's,so it just goes to show eh ?

It could be hurtful to anybody, critising their punctuation. Just don'w think its worth it.

Character of people on Gransnet seems to show through more on what they say than on where they put the old "commas-in-the-air"!

So, jinglej, as you have so wisely advised in the past, avoid the Pedants' Corner (with an apostrophe) if it's of no interest to you. Oh look, there goes another! Don't you think it's to be expected, that on a thread entitled The Apostrophe, there might just be some discussion about its use (no apostrophe there)?

Thanks littlemo - that helps, it wasn't explained to me very clearly at school although I always thought that English was one of my better subjects! I shall remember your explanation. Baggy also put it very clearly.

And I didn't miss off an apostrophe there. I was just referring to a corner with some pedants in it.

Like on this thread.

I so hope you don't finds Pedants Corner of any interest whatso-flipping-ever.

littlemo, I think if you read all the way through this thread, you'll find that several grans have indeed made clear the use of the apostrophe and many have offered precise and correct explanations. However, the people who are interested enough to read the thread, generally have a pretty good grasp already. The biggest 'culprits' tend not to appear on here as they probably have no idea that they are making the mistakes we discuss!! It's much worse out there in the real world, isn't it? (You may also find Pedants' Corner is of interest!)

The apostrophe of possession is, technically, one of omission, since it indicates a missing letter from the possessive case in earl English. Yawn.....