Posted Oct 15, 2002 by Wand'rin star
Those of us who slogged through Old and Middle English know that an apostrophe always denotes something left out.eg 'the mannes ball' became 'the man's ball' when the pronunciation changed.
You didn't deal with 'The greengrocer's apostrophe' - a phenomenon that occurs all over the English-speaking world.
My family name, for the last 30 years or so, has been Jones.I am in fact 'Duncan Jones' mother'.As members of the Jones family, we are sometimes referred to as 'The Joneses'. We live (sometimes) together in a place written Jones' house, but sometimes pronounced Joneses house.
To me, an unregenerate pedant, apostrophes and inverted commas are not the same thing; they just happen to share a keystroke in the way that the a's in bat and ball are written the same, but do not denote the same sounds.
Good on ye, though mate. Brave and bold entry. 
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Posted Oct 23, 2002 by NAITA (Join ViTAL - A1014625)
'The greengrocer's apostrophe' also occurs in Norway, well almost. Norwegian doesn't have the plural s and hence has never needed an apostrophe for the possesive forms. With the increasing influence of English (and the increasing stupidity of people) however possesive misspellings are becoming almost ubiquitous on shop signs of all kinds.
And jumping from one contamination from English to another. Splitting words is another plague. In Norwegian two nouns do not occur after each other. Example: lamb chops = lammekoteletter
'lamme koteletter' on the other hand translates 'lame cutlets'
And when the first part/noun doesn't share spelling with an adjective it just looks stupid.
As if any of you care. 
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