A PLAGUE OF APOSTROPHES

The apostrophe in English serves way too many purposes and leave us all confused, native and non-native speaker alike. Errors abound in private correspondence, and blare at us on public signs. If displayed in public, can it still be wrong? Yes!

It is common practice in English (as in many languages) to push two words together to make one. Cannot is the negative form of the word can. However, there is an alternate version which is can’t. In this case, the apostrophe appears in place of the letters “no” missing from the word not.

There are many of these negative forms with “n’t” standing for “not” without the “o”. Others that follow this patter: didn’t, isn’t, shouldn’t, don’t, etc. Easy, right? Not a lot of room for confusion. But English speakers are great for shortcuts and abbreviations. They do not limit their contractions to negative forms but expand to other verb forms. This leads to confusion with the homonyms there, their, they’re and your, you’re, yore.

The first set (there, their, they’re) are very often misused. The words their and they’re come from the base word of they. The contraction of they are becomes they’re. The possessive version of they is their (changing the Y to I is common in English when adding a suffix). Their is often used in error when they’re is the word needed. Neither of these two related words have any connection to there except for shared sound. Yet the word there is often used in error in place of both of the other words.

The second set of homonyms has fewer problems. Both your and you’re are words based on you. The first is the possessive form (your book=you own the book). The second is the contraction of the phrase. “you are.” “Yore” is a term describing a time in history and has nothing to do with the word you. It is not a homonym is all English-speaking locales, only those in which the long U sound of you is no longer evident when your or you’re is spoken. Yet, these three are often interchanged by those who do not know better.

The final and maybe most often misspelled pronoun contraction is based on the word it. When talking about an object, like a door, you can refer to its handle meaning the handle belongs to or is a part of the door. The problem for this pronoun comes when the object becomes the subject of the sentence as in “It’s covered in dust.” It’s is a contraction of the words it and is. These two words are very often confused with the possessive form its losing most of the time.

But there is one more confusion involving plural forms. English uses an S (or ES) suffix to indicate the word multiples: dog becomes dogs, for example. When forming a possessive version, dog becomes dog’s, but the possessive form of dogs is dogs’. In the past, the practice was to write dogs’s, but this has fallen out of practice. Dealing with a name like Jones which already ends in an S, the plural form Joneses and the possessive form Jones’  are often pronounced the same. Is it any wonder people get confused?

There is a person known as the Grammar Vigilante in England who—under cover of night–corrects these misspellings on public signs. Hooray, I say, for this helpful person, for if we see something spelled wrong enough times, we may very well choose to change the official spelling—historical evidence tells us this. Think about it. What if they’re and their were always spelled there? Or if your and you’re were always spelled yore? It could happen, maybe is happening already.

#EnglishLanguage