O, Apostrophe!
by Anita G.
Gorman
Today,
my dears, we shall discuss the apostrophe, with
all its works and pomps. Or to write that another
way, today, my dear's, we shall discuss the
apostrophe, with all it's works' and pomp's.
Anyone
who is observant has observed that in recent
years the apostrophe has become problematic. Our
schools seem to have given up teaching its uses,
while at the same time our schools have not
eliminated our personal desire to be "correct"
or to be somewhere above bottom on the social
scale. Therefore, amid our social uncertainty and
our ignorance of the apostrophe, we try to
compensate or overcorrect and end up with "Fresh
vegetable's today!"
Those
who are environmentally conscious may be aware
that the apostrophe takes up space and therefore,
eventually, after a really, really long time,
wastes paper. It also wastes ink and toner and
does its little bit to damage the earth. There is
no doubt, therefore, that the apostrophe needs to
be eliminated from our ancient and noble language.
"But
wait," I hear you cry, "won't the lack
of the apostrophe obscure meaning? Could a war
begin if we do not know whether the units' or the
unit's guns are pointed in our direction?"
Ah, my
dears, think for a moment. Units' or unit's: if
the guns are pointing at us, then we must act or
run away. It's that simple.
Here is
something to consider. There are languages that
do not use the apostrophe. For example, Swedish,
the language of my forefathers and foremothers,
does not use the apostrophe. I think the Swedes
may be too busy dealing with their three extra
letters--å, ä, and ö--to bother with the pesky
little apostrophe. Consider farfars farfars
far, which means great-great-great-grandfather
(but only in the paternal line) if I have counted
my fars correctly. The Swedes could have
made this farsfarsfarsfarsfar, which would
have been more accurate since fars far means
father's father, and one can see how easily the
possessive is enacted by adding a simple "s"
without the apostrophe. However, saying and
writing and looking at farsfarsfarsfarsfar (one
word!) would have been difficult if not risible,
and so the Swedes simplified this construction to
farfars farfars far. Nowhere in all of
this did the apostrophe intrude, clutter up the
page, and waste ink.
In
English, if I were to write, "My mothers
mothers uncles hat is hanging on the hat racks
top," you would know exactly what was meant,
but you would be uncomfortable with the lack of
apostrophes. A Swede who read, "Min
mormors morbrors hatt hänger på hatthyllans
topp" would not question the lack of
apostrophes, just the peculiarity of the
depiction.
A badly
educated reader might want to place apostrophes
in various incorrect places, but you, my dears,
with your advanced degrees, would know exactly
where they belong. In the end, I predict that we
will keep the apostrophe. We will say it's for
clarity, but the real reason is snobbery. The
cognoscenti will want to be able to distinguish
themselves from the non-cognoscenti, and the non-cognoscenti
will continue to place apostrophes where they do
not belong, overcorrecting all the way from here
to next Tuesday.
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