Which would you rather...

[VintageGardenia]

My ds (10) asked me today, after I'd ranted about some apostrophe or other,

"Which would you rather, no apostrophe where there should be one, or an apostrophe where there shouldn't be one?"

Obviously either makes me grind my teeth but if I had to choose one or be put to death I'd choose a missing one over a superfluous one.

You?

A missing one is the lesser of two evils for me.

Missing, definitely.

Ha!

Perhaps this will convince him I am not weird.

Merci.

If in doubt, leave it out

missing

of course you are weird, you are in pedants' corner

its not a random sample of the population

I wouldn't have been so foolish as to post this specialised weirdness in Chat.

that's the joy of mumsnet

Another vote for missing.

I was just reading another thread discussing
poor spelling by teachers and schools in general and one poster mentioned that they had seen "tomatoe's" somewhere (can't remember the context).

Surely that is worse than forgetting to put one in!

Definitely prefer missing apostrophes rather than random ones being added in.

Oh, missing, absolutely.