the apostrophe is your friend

The apostrophe is your friend. It's wise to treat it kindly.

By all means, take your apostrophe to retro '80s parties. Just please don't invite it to those lame 80's ones. Share your DVDs with your apostrophe, but under no circumstances should you attempt to share your DVD's. The last time I checked, the DVD didn't own anything (and if it did, this would necessitate a whole new dimension of human rights discourse).* Would you say the same of Blu-rays? No, please don't tell me you would. "Blu-ray's on sale" certainly makes sense if you're talking about an old hick by the name of Blu-ray who happens to be going cheap. Otherwise, keep the apostrophe out of it. Seriously, just because you see the apostrophe in bed with the letter 's' in other situations (especially the 'X is' contraction), this doesn't mean you can generalise and go around thinking it's a universal, monogamous relationship. It most certainly doesn't apply to plurals. In fact, your friend the apostrophe is allergic to plurals in all but the narrowest of situations.



Another kindness you can do: remember that in the crazy world of grammar, contractions wouldn't be contractions without your friend the apostrophe. This is a vital part of that grumpy old thing known as 'punctuation'. Don't ignore punctuation. It may be old, but it'll definitely bite you on the ass if you try to cross it.  If you dont punctuate youre wont to get your reader all confused and youll look daft even if you dont mean to and even if you justify it to urself yourself as an excepted accepted writing convention for the Internet.


Whatever you do, don't take the DONT WALK sign as a good role model for grammar, either. That particular omission is simply an LED light cost-cutting venture.

But most of all, take out ten minutes from your life to commit to memory the cardinal (though admittedly strange) rules commanding when to use its (possessive), it's (it is), your (possessive) and you're (you are). From this you can eventually layer on more complexity, like the differences between whose (possessive) and who's (who is or who has). Of course, there's also the classic grammatical clincher of:

• their ("The ninjas honed their incredible skills"); 
  
• they're ("Now they're going to kick your arse");
• there ("The arse-kicking, incredibly skilled ninjas are over there, you idiot!") and contractions involving 'there', not just in a directional sense, e.g. there's ("There's no chance in hell you're going to survive this") and there'll ("There'll certainly be an arse-kicking ninja coming your way tonight").

etcetera, etcetera.


Notice, only some of these usages involve an apostrophe. Learn which ones (no...not one's) do for each lovely old grammatical situation and you'll be a step closer to becoming a Master of Words by Way of Elimination. It's never too late to start out on such a noble journey.

Learn to love and respect the apostrophe.** If you do (and I applaud all who already do), the apostrophe will reward you with the outward blossoming of your intelligence. That is, unless you're truly a moron and not just grammatically challenged for want of sufficient anal retentiveness. In which case, it's highly likely you'll ignore whatever I say or troll me for the sick pleasure of it. Don’t worry though; the daily deliberate violence you wreak upon grammar will one day have its karmic return. What Apostrophe giveth, Apostrophe taketh away. (Or something else intensely Biblical and very much like that).


[No apostrophes were harmed in the writing of this blog entry. At least, I bloody well hope so...Grammatical incorrectness in this context would be pretty damn humiliating after all.]


* Of course, it'd be perfectly acceptable to use an apostrophe after DVD if you were meaning to say: 'DVD is...'. As in: "this DVD's scratched to all hell". But never should one get away with: "hey, want to borrow some of my DVD's?" This is an infinitely painful and absurd thing to see (as is the use of 'DVD' to signify a DVD player, but that's an issue for another day). 

** Then again, maybe I should switch into PoMo/radical deconstructionist mode and declare all grammar fascist and language, law and articulation a process which embodies an original violence. And it's fine to begin sentences with 'And' (which I kind of like anyhow). And stress that the only way to overcome the fascist violence of grammatically 'legal' language is to screw it with irreverent playfulness, the deliberate flouting of rules, and the constant flow of rank stream of consciousness in such a pretentious spirit that Imconstantlyfilledfilledohuptothebrimlikeabucketwithnohandlesfilledup--brim, to the brim, the brim which is the being-in-question, the question being, on the question of being-in-the-world,ohiwantovomit.v-o-mit. Or something.