I have a thing about apostrophes.

I have for years had to defend my writing because, to put it simply, I am orthographically challenged and that err “disability’ is not helped by the fact that I have a love of words, especially grand sounding ones like “orthography“. There are times when I give thanks to a deity that I don’t believe exists for spell checkers and the modern computer technology that gives me that little red line under a misspelled word. Like David Mitchell I also  have a thing about apostrophes.

Meanwhile there’s no counterbalancing evidence that correctly applied apostrophes keep comma numbers down, or that the grocer’s ones encourage pesky hyphens. Misuse or omission of the apostrophe seldom confuses meaning and its extinction would do no real harm and is probably inevitable.

The Queen’s English Society (to which my knee-jerk response is: “No she isn’t. Doesn’t everyone say she’s mainly German?”) takes a different view. It’s decided that English needs an academy so that it can compete with less successful languages such as French and Italian. “We do desperately need some form of moderating body to set an accepted standard of good English,” it says, while the academy’s founder, Martin Estinel, a 71-year-old who claims still to use the word “gay” to mean “happy”, declares: “At the moment, anything goes… Let’s have a body to sit in judgment.”

Obviously this is absolute horseshit. By what authority would they sit in judgment? Where is their evidence that manacling our language to past usage is at all helpful or necessary? It would only stand in the way of the all-conquering self-diversification that has made English the global lingua franca, and allowed “lingua franca” to become an English phrase, while the French kick impotently against “le weekend”. Fortunately, people won’t take a blind bit of notice of this self-appointed academy and will continue, quite rightly, to use words exactly as they find convenient.

David Mitchell

I must say though I have never got the fear of snakes and arthropods that so many city dwellers have. Respecting them seems most sensible but fear? Don’t think so! They are generally most elegant and beautiful creatures which is sort of how I feel about the apostrophe. It is an elegant creature that seems somewhat at risk due to the over use of text messaging  and Twitter where its omission saves a precious character or a couple of key strokes so let‘s preserve it by using it appropriately and may I suggest that those who repeatedly misuse it to pluralize a noun should be in the first instance admonished, severely beaten for a second offence, and for consistently doing so then the only sanction that is appropriate is that they be hung , drawn and quartered.

Cheers Comrades

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