Perhaps no mark of punctuation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d this one among the smallest in the English language \u00e2\u20ac\u201d has caused more grief. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s misuse appears to be what its best noted for.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
The apostrophe (\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc), that little cosa that few people are able to master, more than anything else, has caused English teachers to turn in their chalk prematurely and declare, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153never again.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The last time I taught freshman composition at Luna Community College, I may have frightened a coed when I wrote \u00e2\u20ac\u0153never again!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on her introductory essay. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d meant that admonition to refer solely to her habit of writing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when she meant \u00e2\u20ac\u0153its.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
To review: Use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153its\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when you can use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153his.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no apostrophe in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153his,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and therefore shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be used in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153its,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which means possession. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d always means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it is.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Its\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the possessive, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The dog ate its food.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Simple.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so for Angela, my student who may have surmised the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153never again\u00e2\u20ac\u009d referred to her off-campus behavior. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know me, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re telling me what I can and can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n
No, not at all. The reference was to grammar, not glamour.<\/p>\n
All of us have sat through endless grammar\/usage classes wherein we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lectured on the apostrophe as a possessive. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reminded that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s car, not Jims car. But then we turn around and insist that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not a possessive but a contraction.<\/p>\n
My first year of teaching English was in a homogeneous group of third- and fourth-graders at Christian Reformed Mission in Zuni, N.M. That year I thought up the notion of codifying all the common errors, teaching to those errors, spreading the word, with the idea that in no time at all, there would be no errors in grammar and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d all write like Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
But I never got the categorizing done, failed to spread the word, and there are still grammar errors in the world.<\/p>\n
Years later, my realization came true, that students in English classes commit few errors but make the same errors constantly. I once had a freshman comp student at Highlands who wrote quite a good essay about the southern New Mexico high school basketball team he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d played for that consistently broke 100 points a game. Robert, the student, apparently scored 50 of them on several occasions.<\/p>\n
His second essay, I noticed, had a bunch of stray marks, which I passed off as carelessness or nervousness. And as we reviewed his paper in my office, I noticed the stray marks appearing before every \u00e2\u20ac\u0153s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
And when I mentioned that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d omitted several apostrophes, he responded, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re right there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, it seems as if Robert put tiny dots, mere pin-pricks before each \u00e2\u20ac\u0153s,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to serve as an apostrophe, in case one was needed.<\/p>\n
And what about the superfluous marks, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you committed several error\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Well, those he called mere stray marks. So Robert attempted to cover all his bases.<\/p>\n
Theoretically, people can pass machine-graded tests by filling in every blank. When I tested applicants for U.S. Census jobs in 1999, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d score the sheets by placing a pre-punched template over each test sheet. And if we failed to notice that every choice was filled in, the applicant might get a perfect score.<\/p>\n
The New York Times online edition has a feature called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Schott\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Vocab,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a blog that invites readers to submit their pet peeves in language usage. Would it surprise you to learn that the misused apostrophe factors in many of 1,000-plus entries?<\/p>\n
Of course, there are others, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m priming my word-processor to write on all that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s implied in the submission by someone named Caroline, who wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In todays society language is used as a unique tool by a writer to get their message across.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
We in the media, accustomed to lecturing others on proper usage, need to be especially careful with what we write. And some of our typos have received considerable space in this column.<\/p>\n
The new local newspaper, The Meadow City Independent, needs to get over its opening-game jitters and smack those incorrect uses of apostrophes. On page 1, below the logo are the words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Peoples Paper.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d P. 2 refers to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Last Weeks Prize,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and on P. 3 is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Mayors Report.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d P. 5 asks, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whats His Name?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And the heading for Richard Tripp\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s column correctly uses the apostrophe in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Trippin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Now,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but lacks a question mark.<\/p>\n
Nit-picking? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so. The errors glare, inasmuch as they appear mainly in headlines. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too much talent on the staff of the MCI to allow these kinds of errors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perhaps no mark of punctuation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d this one among the smallest in the English language \u00e2\u20ac\u201d has caused more grief. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s misuse appears to be what its best noted for. Let me explain: The apostrophe (\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc), that little cosa that few people are able to master, more than anything else, has caused English teachers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}