Posted Jan 5, 2003 by Researcher 213915
In an in-house magazine, a manager took it upon herself to write an article lecturing the staff on the use of the apostrophe. She was tired, she said of reading reports showing ignorant use of the apostrophe. But she herself fell into the trap caused by the “invention” of the apostrophe of possession. There’s really no such thing. I agree with Wand’rin Star, there is only one sort of apostrophe – to show missing letters. This aforementioned didactic manager wanted to tell people to use “it’s” to mean “belonging to it”! Was her face red when her error was pointed out to her – well that bit you could see that was not covered in egg, anyway. If teachers would only tell pupils a bit about the history of English pronunciation and the way English used to be an inflected language — as Wand’rin Star says, “mannes” became “man’s” and, plural, “boysen” (or something) became “boys’” — they wouldn’t need the complicated rules of so-called possession that was described in the original h2g2 article. Anyway, the best rule to my mind is, “When in doubt, leave it out!”
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