You don’t know how much it pained me to abuse the apostrophe in the title of this blog post. If you’re unaware of what I’m talking about, this blog post is for you.
First of all, in common parlance the title should read “the horror”. Because I was trying to make a point, I pluralized “horror” to “horror’s” which should have been “horrors”. The horror doesn’t own anything. In this instance the apostrophe is trying to show possession. The horror doesn’t possess anything.
Apostrophes are used to show what the word has (possessive use) or what the word is missing (a contraction). Apostrophes are _never_ used to denote plural. Ever.
I recently read something at work where a distant co-worker basically referred to “The Jone’s”. Luckily, I work remotely, hundreds of miles from my closest co-worker, but there’s a chance they could still hear my screams.
First of all, we never use an apostrophe for the plural. Secondly, the last name in question was not “Jone”, it was “Jones”. If a house belonged to the Jones, it would be “the Jones’ house”, or possibly, “the Jones’s house” (though that makes me cringe a bit). If we are talking about the folks in the family, we’d be talking about the Joneses. Because when we want to use the plural form of a word ending in “s”, we add an “es”. Not an apostrophe, and we certainly don’t change the spelling of a name to something it’s not just to wedge an apostrophe into inappropriate places.
While I’m on a rant, use the loops of your pants to keep your trousers up because you’re losing weight and subsequently your pants have a looser fit. That’s because you didn’t eat two desserts in the desert after you deserted the rest of the group. And honestly, I couldN’T care less how much weight you’ve gained or lost. If I could care less I probably would.
Please take notes.
I mention all of this because today I read a story about “The Apostrophe Protection Society” closing up shop, basically because the efforts of the society have become a lost cause. The founder of “The Apostrophe Protection Society”, John Richards, age 96, has decided to abandon the effort, citing society has become too stupid and lazy to use apostrophes properly.
I feel his pain.
