People who don't know how to use apostrophes....

[itsaich]

I hope someone can enlighten me. I know there are lots of you out there who don't actually know what an apostrophe is for but use them anyway. I'm just curious to hear why you use them when you do?

I've seen people for instance write something like

I went to the shop's to buy sweets.

Why would you put the apostrophe in the word "shops"? But not "sweets"?

I know you have rules, I just want to know what they are. Or do you just kind of think 'huh, a little line would look nice there' and plop one in for good measure?

Do you maybe just stick them places because you think 'must be time for an apostrophe'?

Enlighten me please.

Apostrophe's want to be free!
Just think of them as condiment's and accept that some people think their text's look best after having been liberally anointed with apostrophes.

I think it’s a mistake to think it’s all nurture or effort.

I used to mark my dc's school newsletters in red and send them back again.

@Surtsey why?

The best example I have ever seen was on a huge professionally created banner outside the National Motorcycle Museum.

”Book your Christmas party’s now!”

I totally understand the curiosity. My DH is an extremely intelligent, well-read, educated man. But apostrophes are a complete blind spot for him. Sometimes he adds an apostrophe to a plural, sometimes he won't on the same word. It seems totally random. If he stops to think about it, he sort of knows what the rules are but he doesn't stop to think about it because it's not that important to him.

At least it didn’t say…

”Book you’re Christmas party’s now!”

Sorry, it's not Chris' house, it's Chris's house, because in this instance you write it as you say it.

I'm with you. I can understand omitting an apostrophe but it's the deliberate addition of an extra one that irks me.

I'm definitely a grammar pedant but I've failed with both of my children. It rankles every time I see them use 'your' instead of 'you're'.

One of your gifts is writing in complete sentences, those sentences being fairly short, which make your words easy to understand.

Have you ever taught grammar and punctuation to children or teenagers?

Have you told them to consider if the your/re is short for 'you are' and if it is, it must be 'you're'?

I think the answer is simple. They don't care.

I think there certainly is a perception that an apostrophe is required to make a plural of a noun ending in a vowel.
The other place I frequently see misplaced apostrophes is in mums and dads.

Have you told them to consider if the your/re is short for 'you are' and if it is, it must be 'you're'?

Many times. My eldest is now 18 so I may have to admit defeat.

They have the SPAG genes of my husband, who still struggles to spell ceiling correctly. I'm outnumbered by the spelling heathens in my family.

Because I went to a school in a poor and disadvantaged area, the education wasn't great. Because my parents speak English as a second language. Because I'm dyslexic so struggle to retain information. But I'm trying my best.

Honestly, what answer is it that you're looking for? People are so often doing the best they can with what they've got.

In my case, I had a brain injury and some days when I look at things like their/they're/there, or too/two/to etc, I genuinely can't remember which word is the correct one I should be using. It's meaningless to me, they are just different arrangements of the same letters. I simply don't have the information stored in my head anymore. It used to be instinctive and just at my fingertips - like automatically picking something out of a filing cabinet. I've lost some vocab as well as punctuation and grammar.

But hey, it's not all bad as it gives people the opportunity to think of me as thick or badly educated or lazy or ignorant, so they can have a nice superior moment I don't mind when it's on boards like this or people think and don't say it - but when people correct you on a thread, unasked for and especially in a superior tone, it really fucking hurts and I stopped using MN for a while in the past because of it. So if anyone here does stuff like that on other threads, please don't!

Anyway that's my explanation. I hope it enlightens you.

Potato potarto

@upinaballoon You’re very kind, but honestly I really do struggle with it and with proofreading what I’ve written. I went to the kind of school where you had to stand at the board parsing sentences. It was quite fun but I was totally rubbish at it.

@charmingthebirds i don’t really understand why but if I was reading, “Chris’s house” would read more easily.

OP, I have often wondered the exact same thing. If there were no apostrophes, or apostrophes in every plural, then it would make logical sense. But the fact that it's inconsistent indicates a thought process.

I'm ok with apostrophes but this does twist my brain sometimes, to the point that I avoid it if possible!

I think I'm right if I say that a plural possessive would be ' without the s?

Example: if Mr and Mrs Smith were the Smiths, their house would be the Smiths' house.

Can someone clarify for me if is that because you wouldn't say (phonetic) the Smithses house?

Sorry, there should have been a please there but I must have deleted it when I was correcting my sentence structure! (Which is probably still wrong somewhere.)

@itsaich your username used to be one of my usernames on another forum 😁 and just the other day I reposted some grammarly reels on the use of apostrophes and “would of” etc in my Instagram stories.

To all the people who immediately got defensive, the OP isn’t critical, she’s curious about the thought process and its apparent randomness.
It’s easier to relate to if you get what’s behind it. “Would of” comes from mishearing, or rather hearing correctly but in the accents where the h in “have” is dropped.
Once I knew that H pronounced as heich was just a regional variation I became desensitised to it (esp since where I live now most people say it like this).

It used to bug me that so many Scottish (and some American) accents say what when like hwat hwen etc 😆 until I read it was the original pronunciation which just got preserved in some accents.

I grew abroad with English as my second language after the age of 12 but it was a dated RP version of English. I only switched to thinking in English about 8 years ago and I know I am not perfect and make my own mistakes but I feel I don’t need to be perfect to allow myself to question dubious grammar or be curious about how certain obviously incorrect usage becomes widespread.

@itsaich I find your user name particularly odd, given you know how to use apostrophes.

If you didn't intend to be mean, why write it in such a sneery way?

my best friend can't spell and she uses apostrophes like confetti, but she can use ellipses like a pro!

you should get off that high horse before you fall off.