Today is International Apostrophe Day!

Im so glad its got it’s own special day.

Wonderful news! As one of the three founder members of the Semi-Colon Club (in a bar near Liverpool Street Station in about 1970) I salute it.

Expect a snowstorm of flying tadpole's.

You missed a couple of good opportunities to insert rogue apostrophe’s there grumppa.

Im sorry, ive lost all my apostrophe's apart from thi's one or two

My local garden centre has fresh loaf’s on sale!

Unfortunately, I could not read the newspaper link, and I do need a good laugh today, as we were told yesterday that DH has cancer.

And here was I thinking that today was the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary!

Not a single apostrophe in five lines of text, nor should there have been, but five line's of text' would 'ave been possible. I suppose! (And that full-stop was misplaced on purpose. Why should apostrophe's have all the fun?)

Thank you for the reminder, grandtanteJE65, that today is a national holiday in France. I remember being surprised and delighted when I found out, aged 16, in Paris.

So sorry to read your news grandtante. I hope treatment is possible. 💐

Sorry grandtante to hear your news. Grumppa - may I join your Society for the Protection of the Semi Colon. This is an endangered punctuation mark and will require care to ensure that it does not become extinct.

May I join, obviously ...?

I agree about semicolon's; I u'se them all the time. Long live the s'emicolon¡¡

Im busy peeling potatoe's and watering my tomatoe's

Signpost today outside a computer shop:

X Box's
Playstation's
P,C's
Laptops

Why, I wondered, did poor Laptops miss out on an apostrophe? Why did PCs get not only an apostrophe but a comma too?

I do need a new computer but I don't think I'll be shopping there

I'm saying nothing

That's really worrying Grandmabatty perhaps there should be a prize for the largest number of unnecessary apostrophes.

Whats the big deal with apostrophe's? 😁

I have spent about six hours on the motorway today. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at some of the presumably professionally sign-written vehicles that were littered with erroneous apostrophes.

Of all the wrongly-used apostrophes that I have ever seen, I think that one that most grated on me was in the word boxe's.
Maybe it's just me, but that simply looks so wrong that I still can't imagine how anyone could possibly think that it was correct.
That was a bad day. Every single cafe in that town was displaying menus with so many apostrophe-based errors that we ended up having to buy a sandwich from a supermarket. 😁
I'm not perfect though - I am pretty certain that I have left some errors (though not apostrophy-related) above.

Oldnproud

Whats the big deal with apostrophe's? 😁

The real purpose of an apostrophe historically is to mark a place in a word where one or more letters have been deliberately missed out. The patriotic song "Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled . ." has letters left out from the words "have and "with".

Medieval lawyer's Latin was peppered with abbreviations using the things, as anyone is aware who has tried to work out for their family tree what an ancestor's will from the Tudor or Jacobean era is all about, and the original Domesday Book uses them a lot - for instance "p'sh" is the scribes shorthand for parish.

They are still in words that show possession - "Gilbert's house" would originally have been something like "Gilbertis house". Used correctly the should not be used in, say "The houses were painted white", because the sentence is not about something belonging to the house, but about the plural of house - one house, more houses. The possessive form would have once had more letters, but the plain plural would not.

"Don't" is an abbreviation of "do not", similarly with words like couldn't and didn't - letters left out and the gaps marked with apostrophes.

"Its" and "it's" seem as though they don't follow the rule, but one of them does.. "It's" has lost a letter from "it is", so it has the apostrophe to replace it, but in this case the possessive "its" doesn't have the apostrophe. There is always one that wants to be awkward!

Elegran

Oldnproud

Whats the big deal with apostrophe's? 😁

The real purpose of an apostrophe historically is to mark a place in a word where one or more letters have been deliberately missed out. The patriotic song "Scots wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled . ." has letters left out from the words "have and "with".

Medieval lawyer's Latin was peppered with abbreviations using the things, as anyone is aware who has tried to work out for their family tree what an ancestor's will from the Tudor or Jacobean era is all about, and the original Domesday Book uses them a lot - for instance "p'sh" is the scribes shorthand for parish.

They are still in words that show possession - "Gilbert's house" would originally have been something like "Gilbertis house". Used correctly the should not be used in, say "The houses were painted white", because the sentence is not about something belonging to the house, but about the plural of house - one house, more houses. The possessive form would have once had more letters, but the plain plural would not.

"Don't" is an abbreviation of "do not", similarly with words like couldn't and didn't - letters left out and the gaps marked with apostrophes.

"Its" and "it's" seem as though they don't follow the rule, but one of them does.. "It's" has lost a letter from "it is", so it has the apostrophe to replace it, but in this case the possessive "its" doesn't have the apostrophe. There is always one that wants to be awkward!

My post was tongue-in-cheek, Elegran - as were my two deliberate apostrophe-based errors in that post. 😁

Years ago, when shopping at a big, local market was the norm, I decided that I'd boycott stalls where apostrophes ran rampant. <<Glove's>> was one I remember well.
However, it soon became clear that if I held to that standard I'd never buy food again and would always have cold hands.

I'm sure there used to be an Apostrophe Society, and I belonged to it, but my membership must have laps'd by now.

Although my grammar and spelling are pretty good, thanks to a rigorous, tawse-aided early primary education in Scotland, I never learned much about the semi-colon and his sister, the colon. I confess to sprinkling them according to self-created rules. I keep meaning to buy an English grammar book - does such a thing exist as an English grammar book for native English speakers?

grumppa

Thank you for the reminder, grandtanteJE65, that today is a national holiday in France. I remember being surprised and delighted when I found out, aged 16, in Paris.

And most definitely also in Spain, where absolutely everything is closed except the restaurants where proud parents are celebrating their child's First Communion with the entire family of grandparents, godparents, cousins of the First Communicant, friends and neighbours having a marvellous time.

And I have done it again! All apostrophes present and correct. I just CANNOT bring myself to misplace them.

Well done, GrandTante!
There are a lorra lorra plural's there, all begging for their apostrophe's.

(Crikey, there was a battle going on with my spellchecker, which would NOT accept the final apostrophe without a fight🏅)

Thank goodness it isn’t only me !
why is it. that words ending in ‘s’ are seen as requiring an apostrophe ; my brain jangles whilst attempting to decipher such nonsense