What an absolute apostrophe!

I was perusing through the rental section of the Internet ‘tother day as my child is thinking of moving over within the next year. Whilst doing this, I was struck by several things: the average price of rental properties in various areas, how common it is to have a theatre room...and the atrocious grammatical standards of some of the letting agents.

And I don’t use the term atrocious lightly.

Now I'm no grammar legend, but at risk of turning Nazi here, let us peruse some examples.

Just humour me.

One agent wrote:

“This spacious home has all the essentials, and being so handy as it is close to shops and public transport.”

Did he re-read that at any point? Shall we try: “This spacious home has all the essentials with the added bonus of being close to shops and public transport.”, or something similar.

Another agent wrote:

“The location of this complex is absolutely perfect! The complex consists of 16 units. With a shopping centre right around the corner as well as (location removed) Road. There are wonderful schools in the area, with beautiful parks. This is such a family friendly area, while also one of the popular area.”

How about more concise and less full stops:

“With two shopping centres close by, this 16 unit complex is in the perfect location! Also with wonderful schools and parks nearby it is easy to see why this is such a popular, family friendly area.”

Then of course there’s this one:

“Colourfully decorated throughout this home features His Hers robes to the master bedroom and a generous size en-suite”

This is just one line from an all over terrible ad to be honest. This short sentence covers two largely unrelated topics, contains incorrect capitalisation and hyphenation (it’s either ensuite, or less commonly in Australia, en suite – refer http://australiandictionary.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/is-it-en-suite-or-ensuite.html for further info on this one), lacks a comma, and states the robes are ‘to’ the master bedroom rather than in.

And two people were responsible for that one.

But my favourite has got to be the following ad (repeated in its entirety because it’s just that bad) – corrections in brackets because I couldn't help myself:

“Featuring 4 HUGE Bedrooms, 2 MODERN Bathrooms and a LARGE study (comma please) this beautifully kept, near new family home is (has been) Exquisitely built with Meticulous attention to detail.

Offering (This home offers) Airconditioning (2 words!) throughout, open plan living, kitchen and dining for the West Australian Summer (and this means what?), flawless stainless steel kitchen appliances, well throughout (cannot even guess what is going on here) and a LARGE (comma for God's sake) low maintenance back yard (full stops are also handy, just sayin’)

Other features include double garage located (is the house located in the following or just the double garage?) on (in, damn it!) a VERY quiet (a VERY quiet what? Street? Prison? Bucket?) located only minutes from the local Community Centre (I repeat...full stops)

Located (third use of “located” within 14 words) only minutes from Local (if they’re only minutes away of course they’re bloody local) primary schools, shopping precincts, public transport and so much more, (just stop there, full stop I mean...poor abused comma) within the sough (I assume this should be “sought”) after suburb of (location removed) this will no (not *sigh*) last long!”

Random caps aside, this ad is just an all out mess...if ever there was a case for bullet points, this, my friends, is it.

I began to wonder after reading all this whether there was perhaps an affliction that rental agents acquired when they joined the fold. Sadly this is not the case. If you take the time to Google bad ads and poor grammatical signage, you'll be astounded (and probably highly dismayed) at the places misspellings, butchered sentences and absent/wayward apostrophes turn up. It’s not just back country classifieds and makeshift card board signs that demonstrate our dubious literary standards; churches, universities, billboards for major companies, and prominent newspapers have all fallen victim to the dumbing down disease.

And this has to be a downward spiralling phenomenon. As a parent, it concerns me that if young people see poor grammar and spelling in public places (by prominent organisations no less) how can we expect them to take their own grammar and spelling seriously? Mistakes such as ‘loose’ being used in place of ‘lose’ and ‘then’ and ‘than’ being frequently transposed are now so commonplace it makes me want to cane someone....possibly Mark Zuckerberg.

Though I'm not saying English is easy, in fact it has many ridiculous spellings and idiosyncrasies that make it the hardest language in the world to learn, but I am saying that there are some parts of it that are being so badly brutalised it’s bordering on criminal.

I have to at least try to stem the tide here.

Behold the humble apostrophe ” ’ ”

In the interests of brevity (and possibly my sanity) I shall focus on only this poor neglected and abused item of punctuation today. If apostrophes give you grief on regular occasion, you have come to the right place...grab a beverage and get comfy.

Apostrophes are simple people and live only to either denote ownership or show that something is missing. Let’s address the first one.

The girl has a book, thus it is the girl’s book. If you see “ girls’ ”anywhere, it means the book belongs to more than one girl. If the two girls share a bedroom, it is the girls’ bedroom. Get it? Great :) Now there is some confusion over what to do with words ending in ‘s’. In some writings you will see, for example, Bess’ book, in others you may see Bess’s book. Both are correct, the key is consistency; if you start with one style, stick with that style.

The only time an apostrophe doesn't appear where you would think it would is with the word “its”...even though ‘it’ owns or possesses something, no apostrophe is used. For example: “The cat licked its foot.” This happens because ‘its’ is lumped in with other such ownership words as my, our(s), your(s) and their(s).

We do, however use the apostrophe when it’s is short for ‘it is’ and every other time letters are missing and words are contracted. Continuing with condensed 'is' examples, consider "s/he's" (s/he is) "that's" (that is), "what's" (what is), "who's" (who is), "how's" (how is) and less commonly "why's" (why is) and  "when's" (when is). Further examples occur when someone does or is something, for example; "That girl's (girl is) going to do it." or " That girl's (girl is) pretty" 

Moving along, the basic ones that most people get correct are “can’t” (can not), “isn’t” (is not), “hadn’t” (had not), “haven’t” (have not) “c/w/shouldn’t” (c/w/should not) and “didn’t” (did not). Others that get a little hazy for some are “shan’t” (shall not), “aren’t” (are not) and “won’t” (will not... for the rest of the convoluted history behind this one, check out answer 26 on this thread http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/4521/what-is-wont-a-contraction-of).

Another word that gets contracted often is ‘will’ as in “that’ll”, “what’ll”, she’ll/ he’ll and I’ll. You don’t want to know what I've seen done to them.

Which reminds me, ‘have’ is another word that is frequently squished. Unfortunately it then all too often booted out all together in favour of ‘of’ c/w/should’ve becomes c/w/should of. Just stop this right now. Other ‘have’ contractions include “I’ve”, “we’ve” and “you’ve”....try not to murder them also please.

But the apostrophes that really seem to throw some people are the ones used to contract ‘are’ such as you’re (you are), they’re (they are), we’re (we are) and who’re (who are). These almost bring a tear to my eye. I sigh deep sighs when I see the wrong ‘You’re/Your” in a Facebook meme; not judging sighs....more...lamenting the loss of our education system sighs.

Just to help out, an easy way to remember these is a simple subbing out for the full term.  

You’re going to get it!

Now try subbing “You are”

You are going to get it!

Sentence still makes sense so “you’re” is correct

If the sentence was “Your dinner is ready”...

“You are dinner is ready” sounds stupid...so use “your”

This subbing technique also works for who's (who is) vs whose and, say, girl's (either belong to the girl or short for the 'girl is') vs girls (a simple plural).

Other stray apostrophes appear in such words as “that’d” (that would), what’d (what would/did) and I/she/he’d (I/she/he had/would)

Watch for these apostrophes, include them, make them feel special.

Now that we have discussed the finer points of where to place apostrophes....here’s one place you don’t stick ‘em: in plurals

Please stop this.

The ‘s’ has done nothing to you to deserve such segregation and I can assure you the apostrophe is probably highly unimpressed and all.

Just imagine....he steps out the door in the morning after kissing his wee twin commas goodbye and stroking the cheek of his gorgeous semi colon wife (she has a full stop in the oven you know) and sets off to make his family proud by assigning some clear and correct ownership, or standing tall (if a little curvy) to represent some poor deleted letters who have had their hopes dashed yet again.

And what do you do? 

Go plonk him in the middle of an average plural. Chuck him in there like he’s just one of the boys, nary a speck of concern for his mental and physical well-being. What if they’re thugs? Have you thought about that?? What do you think is going to happen to him once the other letters work out he doesn't belong there? Huh?

You should be ashamed of yourself. Poor apostrophe, he goes out just looking for a satisfying work environment and because of you he ends up getting leaned on by a blinged out ‘s’ muttering: “You’re not welcome here bruh...”

Have a heart. Let sleeping dogs lie...unless you’re talking about the dog’s bed or the dogs’ bone, keep the apostrophes away.

You could safe a life.

Till next week!

P.S. If you’re looking for a little practice in apostrophe protection, consult the following quiz.

http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/apostrophes_1.asp