attention reader's!

Perhaps it's the industry I work in; perhaps it's the fact that my mum was a schoolteacher. Or, perhaps it's that I'm a pedantic lunatic with nothing better to do.

But when someone jams an apostrophe where it shouldn't be, I want to scratch my eyeballs out and scream with rage and pain and sheer frustration.

Why, oh why, can't anybody get it right these days? There seems to be an urgency, a desperate yearning to thrust that tiny mark into a word whenever an 's' appears. And, considering how often the English language is beaten down into almost code form for the sake of faster, easier communication, it makes no sense that anybody would take the time to ADD another character.

And yet, I could put money on coming across at least one monstrosity every day:

"Boat's for hire" (a sign in Tapu)
"Closed on Monday's" (outside a certain cafe in Matamata)
"I saw you're sister in the weekend!" (on Facebook)


Right - let's go back to primary school.

A textbook will tell you that an apostrophe is either used to signify an omitted letter or letters from a word, or to signify possession.

One doesn't have to be a geek or even good at English to get the damn thing right.

But I'm not about to turn this rant into a lesson in grammar. That's what teachers are paid for. Obviously, though, not paid enough; it seems learning how to punctuate correctly has neatly slipped off the school curriculum.

Perhaps it's not all the fault of teachers. Ignorance of the apostrophe - along with correct spelling - has been exacerabated by modern forms of communication. Which isn't going to go away in a hurry. Which, to the anguish of geeks like myself, means the English language is only going to be twisted further and further out of shape.

And now, to add insult to injury, it seems even journalists - the last hope we have of preserving true English - are now falling prey to "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"...