I need you to know what kind of a nutter you are dealing with here when it comes to things like apostrophes. When Lynne Truss brought out her book, 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' complete with an apostrophe repair kit, I could have applauded! For years I have been using apostrophes correctly and have really disliked the current problem where it appears that people who write pub signs and use chalk boards have absolutely no idea what to do with them!
The discussion was posted on a writers' and editors' group on Linked-In and the general consensus of the writers was that we would hate to see them go. However we are writers and in general understand how to learn and use them.
My six year old came home with two words using apostrophes for his spelling test this week: he had to learn 'I'm' and 'don't'. He did very well, although I had to explain to him that he did not need to make his apostrophe as big as the letters!
The twelve-nearly-a-teenager year old looked over his shoulder and remarked that she always gets 'I'm' wrong.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Surely you know how to use apostrophes?" (I would like to point out that we go over them several times in the year!)
"The problem is I use a small 'i'," she explained, "and forget to put the apostrophe in!"
I was speechless! She knows how to do it when she thinks about it, but the teachers don't seem to care and let so many spelling mistakes go by. It sends a wrong message to the pupils and this is from an ex-teacher!
So what do you think? Should we give in to the masses and let apostrophes go? I can't help it - it would always look wrong to me without apostrophes.
I have written three articles for my other website on using apostrophes and they can be found here:
Photo Credit: Photo on Flickr by mag3737
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