Philosophy of Apostrophe: The Correct Usage
You have the pundits’ permission
To use apostrophe in omission
In possessives you are free to use
In plurals you are free to choose
First, let us a few letters omit
Therefore a few words in size, limit
In silent letters ov’r is a substitute
In contractions it’s in multitudes
And if you have shampoo’d your hair
Do let the ‘e’ disappear
You are correct if you omit the numeral
That’s how I write Indira’s ’84 funeral
Let’s now take the possessive case
Of words that don’t end with an ‘s’
If George’s death brought in the coroner
Men’s room was just round the corner
In names too give not the ‘s’ a miss
Charles’ it isn’t, Charles’s it is
But classical names are exceptions
As Achilles’ heel and Jesus’ crucifixion
In some institution and in some place
-Take Barclays Bank and Toms river case-
We drop the mark of apostrophe here
That is because of usage there
Yet, Woolworth’s Store is another way
But not for long, that I can say
For goodness’ sake where is the ‘s’?
That, my friend, is anyone’s guess
His, hers, its, theirs and ours
All dropped the mark, as has yours
Possessive pronouns are a different lot
Compound nouns are another lot
Duke of Edinburgh’s gaffe was the worst this summer
What he did before Genco Olive Oil’s customer
And if you had a joint company
The last name will hold the possessive key
For if Vinnie and Sonny had some buttonmen
Would be Vinnie and Sonny’s buttonmen then
McDonald’s is already in possessive
Adding an ‘s’ would be surely regressive
So let’s do it with a prepositional phrase
Quarter pounders at McDonald’s is a nice little phrase
Writing 1980’s, CPA’s isn’t quite right
Let the end of 2000s be very bright
Finally, let’s drop the mark from p’s and q’s
And ask about ‘em in the MCQs
-Adapted from ‘Prescriptivist’s Corner: The Catastrophe of Apostrophe’ by Dave Wilton
Nice piece of writing, informative and entertaining.
The possessive astoprophe is on its way out of the English language. As a composition teacher, I keep teaching it, but I often find it omitted not only from my students’ papers and online texts, but also from billboards hovering over US highways.Hard-copy publishers repeatedly demonstrate lower editing standards, so even if print practices somehow still set the standard, less and less is there a standard within print to govern practices outside of it.We can prescribe grammar all we want, but descriptively, we have to admit that language changes even when we don’t want it to.Nonetheless, I appreciate your noble efforts.