Did I miss the memo that said all rules for using apostrophes were cancelled?
I recall an old Dave Barry column joking about a sign saying: Try “our” hot dog’s (with the bonus scare quotes). That probably dates back to the 80s. It’s because the rules for apostrophes are a little complicated. We use them to form both possessives and contractions with a terminal “s” (Bob’s car, Bob’s going to the store), two totally different situations. The rules are full of complications and exceptions (Jones’, its) that a lot of people probably just internalize the false notion that an apostrophe before a terminal “s” is always right. It’s an interesting enough question that there’s even an academic paper on how apostrophes are misused in plurals (Papers and Studies in Linguistics 12, 1979, 527-534). It’s even got a name, the “greengrocer’s apostrophe”, because you see it so often on the signs at grocery stores, which often feature plurals with a terminal s (apples) that give plenty of chances to mis-apply the rules. So no, there’s no new memo, but the old memo is kind of compl
