The apostrophe and Mid-Devon council

Remember when my little niece, aged 4 at the time - got so fed up with the racket her sisters and my daughters were making at a family gathering. She shouted 'can we have a piece of quiet NOW' - we often remind her (in her 30s and a mum of 2 now).

I like that - 'a piece of quiet' - I will find some occasion to use it!

I do pop on to ( should I have used a hyphen there?) this thread time to time.
I know my failings with grammar, but I do try. I loved it at school, but like lots of other 'stuff' life gets in the way.
So I thought I would find a site on line for this subject. I found Bristol University. It's like being back at school; I'm even getting nervous about my answers LOL.
I opologise now for all the mistakes above. And i for one don't mind anyone correcting my grammar on a posting. You can put: Petra doesn't mind me correcting her.

But if you post from an ipad there are often weird autocorrections not of your own making. Tell us how to get on to the website.

Hi Stansgran. I don't know how I got on to the Bristol University. I'm one of those who just keeps pressing buttons.
Google( I never use it) or Bing Bristol University + grammar tests.

I pine for the days of the AAAA, The Association for the Annihilation of the Abherrent Apostrophe as founded by the late great Keith Waterhouse.

Apostrophes AAAA fights back

I remember a local TV crew doing an item on misuse of the apostrophe a couple of years ago. They went around the town's market, where almost every stall had numerous examples of the 'greengrocer's apostrophe'. They interviewed one stallholder, who said that she had never heard of an apostrophe, and that her son, who was doing his GCSEs, had no idea what they were, either. What I wondered at the time and continue to wonder is, if she didn't know what they were, why did she use one in every single sign on her stall?
It is far more common to see an unnecessary/misplaced apostrophe than a missing one, so to be honest, I would rather see them missed out totally rather than scattered around randomly.

Like many people, I was taught none of this stuff in school, but in my case I was (un)fortunate enough to develop my English grammar later (though I know it will never be perfect), through learning French and Spanish as an adult. The trouble is, this has made me the grammar equivalent of the ex-smoker - when I see a misplaced apostrophe, my blood boils irrationally! The OH and I have been known to go hungry on a day out, walking past numerous cafes at lunchtime because we couldn't bring ourselves to go into a place serving coffee's, tea's, and even lunch boxe's to take out. Grrrr!
It's sad, isn't it (in the modern sense of the term)? I know it shouldn't really matter, but I can't help myself! Anyone know a good therapist who could help?

MamaCaz, what school did you go to where no use of punctuation was taught?

We have an apostrophe in our surname - it often causes problems on databases so then we are asked for DOB!

Ana, it was just a typical 1970s secondary school. The emphasis seemed to be on creative writing at that point, and the only 'corrections' made to our work tended to be spelling. I can honestly say that I did not learn one piece of 'grammar' in my English classes there. With hindsight, I feel quite resentful about it, despite the fact that I managed to get decent exam results in the subject.

I do remember one teacher explaining to me why "Me and my brother played out" was wrong, but he happened to be an art teacher. Similarly, it was my French teacher who taught me about collective nouns, and my maths teacher who taught me why it was wrong to use double negatives. Strangely enough, I can still remember picture those teachers and remember their names, yet I can't remember one single English teacher!

Fortunately, we had been taught some basics in primary school, so at least I knew what nouns, proper nouns, adjectives and adverbs were. Thank goodness for that.

Sorry, MamaCaz, I was wrong to assume you were at school when I was (sixties). It just shows how much teaching methods changed over that period!

There was a sea-change about then to "self-expression" and getting anything at all written down was considered so important that getting the grammar and pnctuation right was ditched in case it got in the way of that. The result was that a generation grew up with no idea how the language worked - including a lot of future teachers.

Yes, Elegran, that sums it up perfectly.

Fortunately, that approach seemed to be limited to the teaching of English. We had some excellent teaching and excellent teachers in our other subjects.

A change of heart in Cambridge, anyway:

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/06/council-reverses-ban-on-apostrophes?CMP=twt_fd