#curmudgeon — Public Fediverse posts

Thing 2 (the one that annoys me): leaving apostrophes out because you don't have any idea how they work and you know they might creep in at inappropriate times because of that.

In the memes attached here we see possessives without appostrophes and (I think this is more recent) even without the "s":

• "A homeless man sign said"
• "...what The Rock end goal is."

The second tweet (or whatever it is) is especially interesting because there's evidence this person uses many other elements of traditional American English syntax and punctuation with some sophistication.

My sense, after watching this stuff for a couple of decades, is that people are doing this out of ignorance: they just don't have any clue how to use apostrophes. It's not (originally) a style thing; it's defaulting to "no apostrophes unless I slip up" because of anxiety about not understanding them.

Actually, now I think it is becoming a style issue. I think using possessive apostrophes appropriately would stand out in some online spaces frequented by people under 40, and punctuating a plural possessive correctly might brand you as an imposter or alien.

The Maybe Bad Part: This is about 90% conjecture... I suspect that the progression from "no apostrophe" when one is traditionally required (e.g. shes, thats, my dogs bone, the teachers pet) is giving way to elimination of both the apostrophe and its "s" in the case of possessives (e.g., my dog bone, the teacher pet) because it sounds like AAVE--that is, like American Black dialect. This might sound cool and whatnot, possibly even for reasons the writers aren't aware of. In other words, I suspect some cultural appropriation is happening on top of the ignorance.

Language is what people speak, so I guess this is what's happening now. I will hate it1 until I die, even if I understand this is just how things work.

1 Really just the apostrophe thing

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