{"id":109973,"date":"2025-02-25T22:36:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T22:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/an-elegy-for-the-apostrophe-and-a-defense-thereof-in-a-manner-of-speakin\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T22:36:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T22:36:37","slug":"an-elegy-for-the-apostrophe-and-a-defense-thereof-in-a-manner-of-speakin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=109973","title":{"rendered":"An elegy for the apostrophe, and a defense thereof (in a manner of speakin\u2019.)"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"\"Henry Hitchings suggests that\u00a0my crusade to make students understand the correct\u00a0use of the\u00a0apostrophe may put me on the wrong side of history.\u00a0 He says the apostrophe vexed printers and writers who were confused about its application almost\u00a0from the time of its invention in the sixteenth century, through its proliferation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century print culture:<\/p>\n

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[C]ontrary to what defenders of the apostrophe imagine, its status has long been moot.<\/strong>Before the seventeenth century the apostrophe was rare. The Parisian printer Geoffroy Tory promoted it in the 1520s, and it first appeared in an English text in 1559.<\/p>\n

Initially the apostrophe was used to signify the omission of a sound. Gradually it came to signify possession. This possessive use was at first confined to the singular. However, writers were inconsistent in their placing of the punctuation mark, and in the eighteenth century, as print culture burgeoned, everything went haywire. <\/strong>Although it seemed natural to use an apostrophe in the possessive plural, authorities, such as the grammarian Robert Lowth, argued against this. In a volume entitled \u201cGrammatical Institutes\u201d (1760), John Ash went so far as to say that the possessive apostrophe \u201cseems to have been introduced by mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Ash was writing, the apostrophe was being used to form plurals.<\/strong>Among those who did this was the typographer Michael Mattaire. In a grammar he brought out in 1712 he suggested that the correct plural of species was species\u2019s. Some rival grammarians could barely contain their rage in the face of such recommendations. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the experts (all self-appointed) urgently debated the mark\u2019s correct application.<\/strong><\/p>\n

.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

[H]ere\u2019s the rub: say any of these names aloud and you\u2019ll be struck by the fact that the apostrophe works on the eye rather than the ear. Simply put, we don\u2019t hear apostrophes, and this is a significant factor accounting for the inconsistency with which they are used.\u00a0 <\/strong>Apostrophes can present important distinctions. For instance, compare the innocuousness of the statement \u201cMy sister\u2019s boyfriend\u2019s coming\u201d and the social awkwardness implicit in \u201cMy sisters\u2019 boyfriend\u2019s coming.\u201d Yet pragmatists would argue that such a distinction, rather than being marked with a single little squiggle, needs amplifying.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The aural nature of useful punctuation is an interesting point\u2013but I\u2019d argue that we don\u2019t clearly hear most <\/em>punctuation in spoken English.\u00a0 Aside from inflecting our voices upward when asking a question, or adding urgency and volume to a sentence\u00a0punctuated by an exclamation point, I think most of us would be hard-pressed to hear the difference that punctuation makes.\u00a0 (What\u2019s the aural difference between a semi-colon and a period?\u00a0 Did you just hear that em<\/em>-dash?\u00a0 Or that one?)\u00a0 It seems to me that punctuation was intended to help us translate the inflections of spoken English to the page, rather than the other way around, but that\u2019s just my guess.\u00a0 (Readers, please correct me\u00a0if you know otherwise.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The apostrophe, when employed correctly, <\/em>offers helpful clarification on the page about the relationship between some nouns and other nouns, as well as a useful abbreviation for interpreting spoken language (she\u2019s <\/em>versus she is,<\/em> for example.)\u00a0 And for those reasons, as well as my natural inclination to pedantry, I\u2019ll continue to saddle up and ride to battle for the apostrophe.\u00a0 After all, how\u00a0would you know\u00a0I\u2019m a cowgirl if I didn\u2019t tell you by occasionally droppin\u2019\u00a0some gees and\u00a0replacin\u2019\u00a0\u2019em with\u00a0apostrophes?\u00a0 Yippee-kai-yai-yay!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry Hitchings suggests that\u00a0my crusade to make students understand the correct\u00a0use of the\u00a0apostrophe may put me on the wrong side of history.\u00a0 He says the apostrophe vexed printers and writers who were confused about its application almost\u00a0from the time of its invention in the sixteenth century, through its proliferation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century print culture: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[40255,14431,49642,49643,49644,42569],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-109973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-apostrophe","tag-defense","tag-elegy","tag-manner","tag-speakin","tag-thereof"],"yoast_head":"\nAn elegy for the apostrophe, and a defense thereof (in a manner of speakin\u2019.) - 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