Tell me about it! It’s atrocious! 🙂

Bothers me that people either don’t care or they aren’t learning proper grammar and spelling in school. There’s even a spell check option on here and I use it all the time because I have spelling issues, too.

I am absolutely appalled at all the rude answers you have gotten. Yes, I do not think I would say idiots, but I definitely agree with your point. People seem to think if a word ends in S, it must warrant an apostrophe. It is EVERYWHERE…not just the Internet, which is bad enough, but you see apostrophes in plural words on road signs, in stores, probably even in the papers, which is even worse! Along with the there/their/they’re, your/you’re, and to/too mix-ups, I can understand a simple mistake, but it is so commonplace that there is really no room to think of it as a typo. That being said, did people not learn this stuff in grade school? You would not say The Baker is own that car, or Football fan has are ready. Come on, people!

Firstly, English does NOT EVER use apostrophes to mark plural forms; the only instance where an apostrophe is permissable in the plural is to show possession: be sure you are aware of the differences between: The students went to school; this student’s book; these students’ books. People who put an apostrophe for the simple plural form (e.g. “The student’s went to school”) should, in my view, be prosecuted and heavily fined, if not executed or at least imprisoned for a lengthy period!!! I know of no other language that uses an apostrophe to mark the genitive/possessive case EXCEPT Turkish, when the possessive marker is attached to a proper noun (the name of a place or person): e.g. Türkiye’nin halkı – the people of Turkey.

I’ve been confused by it for several years. An older lady who worked for me about 10 years ago did it. I corrected her and she said her school teacher taught it that way. Now, even people I knew in college do it. I did it the other day, but caught myself before I posted. I wish some psychologist or social scientist would address this. I know for a lot of people it’s unconscious.

I just tried to make a plural possessive for “girls”, with the apostrophe AFTER the “s”, where it’s supposed to go. Facebook (yes, Facebook) corrected my punctuation, so to speak, so that the apostrophe came BEFORE the “s”. Such stupidity, now made institutional, angers me.

Why do some people pretend to be so superior? Such characterizations as yours usually stem from an extreme sense of insecurity and self-loathing, which you then project onto others. Calm down, take a deep breath, and learn to empathize with your fellow anxious doubters.

That being said, there is actually a probable reason for the confusion. At one time apostrophes were used to form plurals of numbers (e.g., “the 1950’s”), at which time they served as an artificial separation between unlike characters. Combine that with the obsession of legions of English teachers about getting apostrophes correct in possessives and contractions (“its”/”it’s”), and it is understandable that many people started throwing in an apostrophe with every plural like a spare tire, just in case, on the theory that it was better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Caution: Spoiler!!

You’re just trying to spark debate again hon – chill out! (:

And no, I don’t like incorrect apostrophe usage myself – but I’m guilty of all sorts of other grammatical atrocities, well-educated and intelligent being beside the point. (:

They do it to vex people’s like you who feel they are intellectually superior because they don’t use an apostrophe. For your information, it was grammatically correct to write “1980’s” up until last year. That grammar rule changed. If you don’t go to school every year for the rest of your life, you aren’t in tune with changes to the rules of grammar.

You’d have to ask them why they do it.

Your English is awful, by the way, but I wouldn’t consider banning you from anything because of it – that would be elitist and presumptuous of me.

It is customary and grammatically correct to use apostrophes to form plurals for root words that end with the letter “s”.