The ambivalent apostrophe

Little, Greta D.

doi:10.1017/s0266078400002388

Cited by 7 publications

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“… 1 Short readable histories of the apostrophe are quite common. See Little, 1986: 15–17; Teitelbaum, 1993: 23–24; Garret and Austin, 1993: 61–63; and Beal, 2010: 58–62. …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An athletes [sic] performance: Can a possessive apostrophe predict success?

Cop¹,

Hatfield²

2017

English Today

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If we believe social media, newspapers, and even some of our best friends and colleagues, the war over standard usage is on. As with many wars, the opposing sides seem to be entrenched in differing ideological positions and many of the battles seem to take place over the most unstable, smallest bits of territory - such as the Oxford comma, singular they, or split infinitives. In this ongoing war, possessive apostrophes have attracted particularly aggressive forays. For example, when some English cities proposed removing apostrophes from street signs, various news outlets published headlines such as, ‘It's a catastrophe for the apostrophe in Britain’ (NBC, 31 January, 2009), ‘Dropped apostrophes spark grammar war in Britain’ (New York Times, 16 March, 2013), and ‘“It's pandering to the lowest common denominator”: Anger as Cambridge bans apostrophe from street names’ (Daily Mail, 18 January, 2014). Explaining Birmingham's ban, one city councillor was not that much less sensational, stating that apostrophes ‘denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed’ and that ‘they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it’ (NBC).

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“… 1 Short readable histories of the apostrophe are quite common. See Little, 1986: 15–17; Teitelbaum, 1993: 23–24; Garret and Austin, 1993: 61–63; and Beal, 2010: 58–62. …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An athletes [sic] performance: Can a possessive apostrophe predict success?

Cop¹,

Hatfield²

2017

English Today

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“…The conventional use of the apostrophe has been to indicate the possessive form, and missing letters in a contraction but its application has never been exact (Little, 1986;Sklar, 1976). For example Little surveyed American signage and found widely varying uses of the apostrophe including some that appear to be nothing more than textual decoration:…”

Section: Consider the Commonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orthography as a fundamental impediment to online information retrieval

Brooks

1998

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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Orthography is the linguistic study of written language: Elements of text such as letters, punctuation marks, and spelling. Information retrieval systems operate in the orthographic realm matching some text strings (i.e., index entries) from documents with other text strings (i.e., query terms) from patrons. During the early history of information retrieval, it has been convenient to assume the rationality and uniformity of orthography in order to concentrate effort building information retrieval systems. Fundamental orthographic problems have persisted into modern information retrieval systems, however, where white‐space normalization and the arbitrary treatment of punctuation have exacerbated the orthographic impediment to information retrieval. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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“…Apostrophes do not represent any sounds, and since nouns in the genitive, and plural nominative and accusative nouns with few exceptions sound the same, their spelling distinctions are purely grammatical (Bryant et al ., 1997: 93). Because the sign exists only in the written language, its usage has been rather unstable ever since it was first introduced to the English language in the sixteenth century to mark dropped letters (Little, 1986: 15−16), and it was not until the eighteenth century when the possessive apostrophe was first introduced (Crystal, 2003: 68). The usage guide database HUGE (Hyper Usage Guide of English), which is built by Robin Straaijer as part of the ‘Bridging the Unbridgeable’ project that Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade wrote about in an earlier issue of English Today , proves that apostrophe ‘misuse’ is the most popular topic in the field of language advice when it comes to punctuation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Apostrophe(')s, who needs them?

Lukač¹

2014

English Today

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The improper use of the possessive apostrophe has for a long time been a subject of concern among the authors of usage guides in English. Apostrophes do not represent any sounds, and since nouns in the genitive, and plural nominative and accusative nouns with few exceptions sound the same, their spelling distinctions are purely grammatical (Bryant et al., 1997: 93). Because the sign exists only in the written language, its usage has been rather unstable ever since it was first introduced to the English language in the sixteenth century to mark dropped letters (Little, 1986: 15−16), and it was not until the eighteenth century when the possessive apostrophe was first introduced (Crystal, 2003: 68). The usage guide database HUGE (Hyper Usage Guide of English), which is built by Robin Straaijer as part of the ‘Bridging the Unbridgeable’ project that Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade wrote about in an earlier issue of English Today, proves that apostrophe ‘misuse’ is the most popular topic in the field of language advice when it comes to punctuation. The apostrophe holds its own among numerous disputed items, such as ending sentences with prepositions, using me for I, who for whom or splitting infinitives. The first historical reference to the apostrophe in the HUGE database appears in Reflections on Language Use by Robert Baker in 1770 and it continues to be discussed to the present day. The discussion of the mark's ‘misuse’ has been widely popularized by the publication of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation in 2003.

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The ambivalent apostrophe

Abstract: Punctuation marks like the comma and the question mark are fairly secure in ‘literate’ usage, but one cannot say the same for the apostrophe, whose curious and unstable history and present condition merit some thought.

Cited by 7 publications

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An athletes [sic] performance: Can a possessive apostrophe predict success?

An athletes [sic] performance: Can a possessive apostrophe predict success?

Orthography as a fundamental impediment to online information retrieval

Apostrophe(')s, who needs them?

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