You can't have too many apostrophe's


Can we talk about this? Is it possible? Or by bringing it up, will I be relegated to that category of individual so many love to hate, the dreadful "grammar n?zi"?

Does it drive anyone else nuts that it seems that more and more adults in this country could evidently not pass a 5th grade English exam?

And is the increasing proliferation of "grocers apostrophes" THE single most annoying element of the above?!
paulfolbrecht


When I was in college at Syracuse University in the early 80s, in my particular curriculum we would receive FAILING grades on our papers if we had only ONE typo or misspelling.


Stuff like that makes me mad as hell. Pure BS. Colleges really suck!
Correct grammer can be compared to the use of a Knife and Fork. You can use them in different ways to achieve the same result but there is a standard. Since coming to America, I've never seen such neanderthal-like technique from the professional sector, all the way down to Kindergarten.
Tabl10, you make an interesting point, which I myself have noted: even most non-native-English speakers have better grammar skills than the average American. Virtually none of the immigrants I know display the same chronic lack of knowledge of basic grammar that is so common among Americans today. They learned their English in different schools in a different culture.

Yes, there are certain grammatical rules that have some leeway or different standards, but there are many others that are simple, have never changed, and are identical in all English-speaking countries. One example would be using an apostrophe in a plural: it's nonsensical, period.

This one really will be my last post here - no 'might' about it.