Lets kill the apostrophe ???

We don't get a whole lot of comments on our posts. Some readers may think there's no point in arguing with someone who has his own printing press (figuratively speaking). But others, we think, don't write for fear that Ed. will catch a grammatical error and make fun of the commenter's inability to follow the rules of English grammar and composition.

This fear is not unfounded. Walt is the son of an English teacher. [Do you mean a teacher who was born in England or a teacher of the English language? Ed.] [Stop picking the nit. You know what I mean! Walt]

Aha! There's the problem, right there. It is possible to break the rules and still make oneself understood. "I seen it," grates on my son-of-an-English-teacher's ears, but I know what the speaker is trying to say.

Much of the time we cannot hear grammatical errors in oral speech. The speaker may not know whether he's saying "their", "there" or "they're", but the listener can work out the difference from the context. Consider these sentences. (1) Their coming was foretold by the prophet. (2) "They're coming," the prophet said, "just as I predicted." You don't even need to think about the spelling unless you have to transcribe what you heard.

Which brings us to the apostrophe. A mistake that makes me wild [and dangerous! Ed.] is the confusion of "it's" and "its", which we see nowadays even in "respectable" journalism. No-one knows which is correct because they have been taught (by teachers who themselves don't know the rules) that self-expression is more important than correct spelling and grammar.

If you were born after 1955, Walt will now teach you the rule. "It's" is a contraction for "it is". "Its" is the possessive of the third person singular neuter pronoun "it". Thus "It's raining outside so the dog went into its kennel" is correct... assuming the dog had been neutered. [Cute. Ed.]

But what difference does it make?! Someone could write "Its raining outside so the dog went into it's kennel" and the reader would understand perfectly well. You can't hear the apostrophe! It might as well not be there, as in "Its raining outside so the dog went into its kennel." Who cares??!!

That point has been made by many cunning linguists, including Richard Nordquist, founder of The Campaign to Abolish the Apostrophe. The comments on his six-year-old blog are worth reading, and largely support his case.

Mr. Nordquist's blog has inspired a newer website, Kill the Apostrophe, "for those who want to remove the apostrophe from the English language, on the basis that it serves only to annoy those who know how it is supposed to be used and to confuse those who dont."

Even purists like Walt and Ed. are just about convinced. The only problem is that if we get rid of the apostrophe, it won't be long before we're dropping the capital "I" (first person singular pronoun) in favour of "i", and writing abominations like "ur" instead of "you're"... Oh... Wait...