After that thread.......

Absolutely right Ariadne. At Parents' Nights in my school I always had to take time to explain to parents that reading would indeed help with spelling, grammar and vocabulary acquisition and they understood that. However I seemed to hit a brick wall when I said that the best way to help children improve writing skills is also through reading. To me it was self-evident but quite a few parents needed convincing!

I've always thought that if children read, then they absorb a lot of grammar and punctuation usage almost by osmosis!

Crimson if children are exposed to correct grammar and usage from the beginning they simply absorb the correct version. If in the book, a child has a toy. wouldn't you expect to refer to 'the child's toy'? The alternative would be to present the wrong version and subsequently switch to the correct way. No reasonable teacher would advocate that!

Why are so many people so hung up about apostrophes? If in doubt, miss them out! Those who scatter them everywhere make lots of mistakes. Those who miss them all out make relatively few! I cannot see what the problem is so will continue to use them (correctly!) Just remember that there is NO rule in grammar that says every final 's' needs an apostrophe and that's where most mistakes happen.

I noticed my 4 1/2 year old grandson's reading book had words with apostrophies in. Thought he was a bit young for that sort of thing, but he seems to be taking it in his stride.

I often find that I'm re-phrasing a sentence just so I don't have to use an apostrophe at all. So "the boy's books" would become "the books that belong to the boys."
Taa daa - no aprost ---no, I can't even be bothered even to try to spell it again!

Thank you, Jingle - so my teacher training was not wasted after all.
I was a specialist remedial teacher (as we were called in those long-ago days) so I got used to giving simple explanations.

Greatnan, there was a long thread about the flipping thigs a while back.

But I think your explanation is the most easy one to understand! (after all that!)

If in doubt, leave 'em out. Better than sprinkling the pepper-pot randomly over the page and crossing your fingers.

I don't want to teach all you grandmothers how to suck eggs, but just in case anyone is a bit vague about apostrophes, they are used in two ways:
To show that a letter has been omitted. e.g. don't
To show possession of, eg. the boy's book (one boy) and the boys' books, more than one boy.

Carol, that would have been so funny.

I think I might just stop using them.

Notso - that is very good!

Just come back from the greengrocer's, where he has proudly announced on the board outside the shop - potato's, cauli's and banana's. So tempting to rub it all off with my hankie!

I think I get it more or less right most of the time, but I don't stress about it.

There's a tale about Abraham Lincoln (I think it was him) He was faced with a choice of 2 potential employees for the same important role. One of them criticised the spelling and punctuation of the other. Abe declined to employ the pedant saying 'Young man, I couldn't work with anyone who only knows how to spell words one way'

Oh jingle you'll start it all up again which I'm sure was never your intention.

Greatnan I always hiss through my teeth whenever I see cafés advertising paninis, given that panini is already plural. However, I saw the ultimate hiss-provoker the other day – panini's.

I am afraid I am another who can't bear not to use them correctly.
And the 'greengrocer's apostrophe' drives me mad. The worst I have seen was on a cake shop though - ' Gateux's'
There are quite a few posters on my ex-pat forum who use one routinely with every plural, and some seem unable to find the correct key and use a comma in their place.

I dont.