An Apostrophe Catastrophe
The apostrophe is a versatile and quite helpful punctuation mark — it helps us determine who owns what in a sentence. It can also denote contraction of two words into one. But there’s one thing it can’t do, that people seem determined to impose upon it anyway – grammar rules be damned.
The infraction in question: using the apostrophe plus the letter ‘s’ to make a word plural. Example: “We have dozen’s of pre-owned electric toothbrushes to choose from.”
A more forgivable, but still incorrect, usage is when folks use good ol’ apostrophe to set off a time period: “Duran Duran was a great 80′s band.”
I don’t know if it’s just me noticing these occurrences more, or if the advance of Internet-bred illiteracy is actually making them more common. For the record, do not use an apostrophe to indicate something is plural. The proper tool for that, in most cases, is simply “s” or “es.” (We can discuss mouses versus mice versus meece some other post.)
Usually when I see these impostoring apostrophes, they’re on a leaflet, a sign in front of a sandwich shop, or some other place that likely doesn’t have a professional copy editor on duty. That said, there’s no reason ordinary people can’t avoid making this simple mistake — especially in communications that will be seen (and judged) by so many others.
Together, we can stave off an Apostrophe Apocalypse.
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