'Laziness Has Won': Apostrophe Society Admits Its Defeat (theguardian.com) 198
A society dedicated to preserving the "much-abused" apostrophe is to be shut down as its chairman said "ignorance and laziness" had won. From a report: John Richards, who worked in journalism for much of his career, started the Apostrophe Protection Society in 2001 after he retired. Now 96, Richards is calling time on the society, which lists the three simple rules for correct use of the punctuation mark. Writing on the society's website, he said: "Fewer organisations and individuals are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English language. We, and our many supporters worldwide, have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won!" Richards started the society after seeing the "same mistakes over and over again" and hoped he would find half a dozen people who felt the same way.
Who? (Score:3)
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He sounds like the kind of guy that would run a Homeowners Association, except that he couldn't fill out the form because it had too many grammar errors and the property management company ignored his phone calls.
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He sounds like the kind of guy that would run a Homeowners Association, except that he couldn't fill out the form because it had too many grammar errors and the property management company ignored his phone calls.
Too many grammatical errors.
FTFY.
Re: Who? (Score:2)
...it had too many grammar errors
My apologies; I don't speak Inbred. Were you attempting to say "grammatical??"
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Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)
Neither..
Homeowner's Association: The singular homeowner owns the association.
Homeowners' Association: The group of homeowners own the association.
Homeowners Association: This is an association of multiple homeowners with no possessiveness indicated.
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Yes people understood now in this mans lifeyime, insignificant thing like apostrophe omitted, not a big deal. Or not a deal at all, think of how much time wasted try to keep English 'proper' English is living language so tge witch hunt is ridiculous, you let us write how we want to write and that exactly how we done it. Standard of privilige white male criticized everyone else while kept them down. Harsh and sickening. White patrimony wont be around for much longer.
Don't like it? Pick. Another. Language.
You do realize, of course, that there are about a dozen spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors in your illiterate screed, don't you?
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Re: Who? (Score:5, Funny)
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I hope this is sarcasm.
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Re: Who? (Score:3)
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Re: Who? (Score:2)
Re: Who? (Score:3)
Even /. has it in for the humble apostrophe!
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Ignorance? (Score:2)
Sure he's that guy that's ranting about ignorance in the unprecedented "modern times" in which literacy is nearly universal.
You want widespread literacy? That means the clergy and aristocrats surrender up their near-total control of the rules of written language to the literate masses. Not that the clergy were actually that literate, the average modern grade-schooler is more literate than all but the most educated clergyman or aristocrats of old.
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well at least he had the brains to make one last hurrah for publicity and call it quits.
also his announcement reads like shit and abuses the comma so the jokes on him! furthermore some virtual keyboards are just setup by default so that using anything else than the latin characters is a huge pain in the arse.
furthermore I cannot believe that someone would try to make up such a society for english all of the languages, given that whole global english is all lucky loosy and has always been that way, bruce. so
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Has anyone ever heard of this guy before?
Whos he anyway's?
Catapostrophe (Score:5, Informative)
Cant understand (Score:2, Funny)
Id like tknow, whats Richardss argument. its not like you cant write your sentences without apostrophes. dont make sense
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Ultimately a lot of punctuation is intended to eliminate ambiguity and improve readability. Sometimes one can sort of work out what the real intent was, sometimes not.
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it's dumbasse's like you that ruin the english language
Excess Apostrophe's (Score:3)
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Direct quote from the front page of the website in question:
"With regret I have to announce that, after some 18 years, I have decided to close the Apostrophe Protection Society...........This web site, masterminded by John Hale, will however remain open for some time for reference and interest."
So the society is closing but the website is remaining up.
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No, it's apostrophe.
Hyphens (Score:4, Funny)
Well, it's probably a bad time do start something like the hyphen society.
Re:Hyphens (Score:5, Funny)
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its
FTFY. It's is incorrect in that situation. Signed, your friendly neighborhood grammar OCD gal.
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Your post produced a whooshing sound that was so loud, I could hear it from my desk.
Or perhaps it was all the other people who failed to recognize that the badly written English was deliberate.
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OCD. OCD. OCD!
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His. Hers. Its.
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The begs the question society agrees.
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Get ahead of the game, the hashtag society is ready.
Re: Hyphens (Score:2)
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May run into problems with the sharp and hashtag societies. Of course, the great irony is that the hashtag wars was not about the hashtags at all.
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Well, apparently length does matter.
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The apostrophe is unspoken, which suggests a lack of actual utility. It is unsurprising to me that many people don't bother to learn and follow the rules....they are arbitrary, require effort, and do not recoup the clarity loss from the spoken word.
Emojis are more useful for conveying emotion and subtleties that are normally conveyed through tone of voice and body language, which makes their relative popularity no surprise.
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So is the 'h' in thyme, but I don't see it going away.
If you think an apostrophe lacks utility (the word actual is superfluous in this case), then kindly tell us what it's doing in the word can't.
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And these are the same people that keep meaningful spelling reform from happening. "The words are spelled this way because we don't think language should ever change"
Re:Hyphens (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue isn't pronunciation, it's the meaning of the word. As the AC noted, and my intended intent, the word "can't" is substantially different from the word "cant".
And that is not the only instance this can happen which is why the entire purpose of the apostrophe is to give the correct meaning. Further, the apostrophe indicates two words merged as one for the sake of convenience. Rather than saying it is all the time, we simply say, it's.
If people don't care about an apostrophe to provide clear meaning to what they say, why should I bother to care what they have to say?
Ironic (Score:2)
There, they're, their...its not so bad (Score:2)
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Don't for,get tho,se lo,wer cas,e apostraphe's.
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Prescriptivists got their prescribed defeat once again. When will they learn.
Condolences... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry to hear that the society's longevity was abbreviated in this way.
shorter summary somewhere? (Score:5, Funny)
tl;dr
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Does this mean they will be legal Scrabble words? (Score:2)
Apostrophies migrated to Germany (Score:2)
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Small correction: as far as I know, the language rules still allow the apostrophe's possessive use with an s only if its purpose is to distinguish between something like Andrea's (female name) and Andreas (male name).
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Same thing in the US. Superfluous apostrophes abound.
Aristrocrat weirdo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Aristrocrat weirdo (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not true. It's not even close.
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Damn, where are mod points when you need them? + Insightful. or Informational.
The "lazyiness" excuse is just an imaginary historical answer for the modern lazy thinking types.
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This is not true. It's not even close.
I was thinking it would be something African because the poster said "still be speaking", and it is generally believed that spoken language predates written. I suppose that the first people that migrated out of Africa were communicating, but nobody knows for sure.
On another note, it appears to me that our cave painting ancestors had used apostrophes to imply possession, but closed-minded scholars claim that those are spears sticking out of the antelopes.
Re: Aristrocrat weirdo (Score:2)
Because we were too lazy to fight off the Angles, Saxons, Vikings, French and the rest with all their languages? Too lazy to stop the take-up of borrowed words from the countries we colonised in later years?
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This, a thousand times this.
Language pedants are profanely ignorant to the history of language. Languages evolve based on their usage, they change over time and people who are trying to enforce archaic rules because it was written in a book a few decades ago are just demonstrating that they are ignorant jerks. I'm younger than 40, but I can remember the radically different language used back in the 90's, since then entirely new forms of written and spoken communication have emerged just within the English l
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Doom and gloom in the Petitio Principii meeting (Score:3)
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Hmm, your post was too intellectual for me so I had to run it through a Pulp Fiction translator, output:
"Say 'begs the question' again. Say 'begs the question' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say 'begs the question' one more goddamn time!"
Much better, HTH.
At present apostrophe is a poor language construct (Score:2)
The fact that incorrect use rarely leads to problems or misunderstanding demonstrates that it needs to be revamped or eliminated.
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Plural vs possessive can actually cause a lot of confusion, especially in technical documents. One of my “bad” uses is using an apostrophe to separate plural of an acronym vs possessive/association of that acronym— UPSs vs UPS’s, which can come in handy for atypical acronyms. The whole contraction thing though should’ve been outlawed but wasn’t.
Re:At present apostrophe is a poor language constr (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that incorrect use rarely leads to problems or misunderstanding demonstrates that it needs to be revamped or eliminated.
Punctuation issues cause problems all the time. Just ask the Oakhurst Dairy in Maine [usatoday.com], where a misplaced comma in employee contracts cost them $5 million.
In legal documents, including the EULAs that people click through every day, there is a world of difference between "the users" and "the user's".
No, the site is not shutting down. (Score:2)
But, sadly, we are losing the fight to use the apostrophe correctly.
Even Data, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, was unable to master the nuances of the contraction. In the 23rd century, a sentient artificial life form was amazed at how humans seemed to grasp this basic concept.
Clearly, itâ(TM)s another timeline as in 2019, text-speak and the Twitter-Verse rule over proper usage of the English language and people think itâ(TM)s acceptable formal communication.
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People who can't use apostrophes correctly are loosers.
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But, sadly, we are losing the fight to use the apostrophe correctly.
Even Data, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, was unable to master the nuances of the contraction. In the 23rd century, a sentient artificial life form was amazed at how humans seemed to grasp this basic concept.
Clearly, itâ(TM)s another timeline as in 2019, text-speak and the Twitter-Verse rule over proper usage of the English language and people think itâ(TM)s acceptable formal communication.
That was an intentional limitation in Data's firmware, designed, like the exclusion of the "emotion chip", by Dr. Noonien Soong as part of Data's "downgrade", in order to appease the ridiculous colonists that were allegedly threatened by Lor's perfect emulation of humans.
IOW, there wasn't anything inherently deficient in Data's processing, he was intentionally less perfect than Lor, despite his repeated protestations to the contrary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Laziness is the whole point! (Score:5, Insightful)
"they're" instead of "they are"
"can't" instead of "can not" or "cannot"
"it's" instead of "it is"
"woudldn't" instead of "would not"
So if anything, its a victim of it's own success. (to the observant reader, that was intentional)
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I prefer to think it's what my english teachers used to order us not to do: use spoken language patterns in writing, a warning that made very little sense outside technical documents.
But laziness, yes, if you accept that laziness is equivalent to increased efficiency in speech. Seems churlish not to propagate that efficiency into written english!
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"they're" instead of "they are"
"can't" instead of "can not" or "cannot"
"it's" instead of "it is"
"woudldn't" instead of "would not"
So if anything, its a victim of it's own success. (to the observant reader, that was intentional)
My favourites are compound contractions such as it'sn't for "it is not" and shouldn't've for "should not have". Using a sentence like "it'sn't my fault" is the epitome of efficiency... or something.
How about semicolon society (Score:2)
If things are bad with apostrophes, the situation with semicolons is much worse. Apostrophe usage is very clear and easy to understand, but semicolons seem to be harder to grasp and even fewer people understand their use and the subtle differences between them and commas.
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Apostrophe, least of the problems English language (Score:2)
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Quite the opposite, in fact. All of the worst words in the English language are either Latin or French, and the French words are essentially Latin anyway. Even better, English borrowed the apostrophe from French! The very word you mention here is, in fact, borrowed from French (and thus from Latin)!
Any time you come across an "English" word that is just awful (weird spelling, nonsensical pronunciation, etc) do a quick etymology search. French loan words are, in general, worse than the ones borrowed dire
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In English, change is very, very slow in the written language. [vs. Dutch, German, ...]
That's because, unlike the latter (and also French), English does not have a legislative body prescribing rules.
Instead, it has research teams examining and reporting on how it is used, and educational organizations attempting to standardize how it is taught. This lets the spoken form change quickly.
The written form isn't strictly phonetic (in contrast to Spanish). "Loan words" are usually initially spelled according
Let him enjoy his retirement (Score:2)
Let the man enjoy his retirement, in peace, until the Terminator unit (one of the earlier models gone rogue) travels to the present day and visits retirement homes. Its programming is Rock solid. He just happened to have picked the wild card from the stack of mission objectives.
fz called it (Score:4, Funny)
the crux of the biscuit
is the apostrophe
It is good to try to get things correct (Score:5, Insightful)
We all, occasionally, make mistakes so take a little effort and try to get it right. Correct use of apostrophes does make reading & understanding text easier -- for me anyway. Many do not care: they expect their readers to put in the work to understand what they meant but did not take the time & effort to write properly.
Lynn Truss wrote an excellent book Eats, Shoots & Leaves [lynnetruss.com] that talks about correct use of the comma. Read it: you will make what you write easier to understand.
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According to Oxford's rules, that book's title makes incorrect use of the comma...
Correct would be "Eats, Shoots, & Leaves."
Failed due the bad name (Score:2)
Death to Oxford comma! (Score:2)
pedantic much?
Apostrophe was a great album (Score:2)
Frank Zappa was a great supporter of the '
Remember folks, don't eat the yellow snow.
Laziness will always win (Score:2)
Hard work often pays off in time. Laziness always pays off now.
I, too, object, but ... (Score:2)
... "ignorance and laziness" are misnomers. Actually, people are "apathetic."
It's another, "OK Boomer," moment.
Let it go.
different battle (Score:2)
should of drawn a different line in the sand.
should of.
should. of.
should.
of.
a battle between the of's and the of-nots
No! (Score:2)
Laziness didnt.
Im glad (Score:2)
while we're on the topic of pedantry... (Score:2)
In the fragment "but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won", shouldn't it be, "but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times HAS won" instead?
so i could that (Score:2)
Lazine'ss won
Here's how to use an apostrophe (Score:3)
The Oatmeal lays this out in a rather fun and methodical way.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/... [theoatmeal.com]
Fake News (Score:2)
https://www.apostrophe.org.uk/ [apostrophe.org.uk]
Beware of FAKE NEWS
This APS Website is NOT CLOSING DOWN!
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Every other article that I could find on this failed to include a link to the actual message/site itself.
TFA also didn't even bother to include the "three simple rules". I'm impressed with how low "journalism" has fallen.
(The observant may notice that, like many programmers, I deliberately use computer-style nesting for surrounds like quotation marks and parentheses vs. the period, rather than dragging it into the enclosure according to the rules of "proper" English punctuation. IMHO this is a much-needed
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As a bonus, that site has a link to the "Apostrophe Apostasy" song.