I don’t think I’m a grammar Nazi. I mean, frequenting fora and the internet generally, speaking to others via text, and so on, does expose ‘one’ to a wide range of spellings and sentence constructions.
I would guess that as long as what is being said can be understood, then proper ‘communication’ has taken place.
But, when we get back to ‘official’ documents, signage, or places where the long form of correct English rules, surely correct English should rule?
Yes?
So, why has the ‘apostrophe‘ appeared everywhere, and is it part of our ever evolving English language so I should just accept it?
Let me explain. The apostrophe is a punctuation mark that is used to indicate possession. As in “the dog‘s bollocks”. The apostrophe indicates that the bollocks are possessed by the dog. The apostrophe can also indicate the omission of a letter or letters like in the word “can‘t” which is a contraction of the phrase “can not”.
However, the apostrophe isn’t, or wasn’t, used as a form of indication of a plural, or where there’s more than one of something. Instead you just whack an ‘s‘ on the end, surely? For example when talking about “the 1960s” or “the 60s” there is no need to indicate possession or omission. “60s” is correct. “60‘s” is not correct.
Yet, the apostrophe keeps appearing when it’s not required in plurals. Why are people doing this? Is it ignorance, or is it some weird changing of the English language? Should I be letting it bug me, or should I just chill about it?
And finally, is the use of an apostrophe in my photo a correct use or not?
England's England 