Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London .. suggested ... we could ... leave a space... Have we really nothing better to do with our lives than fret about the apostrophe?

Replacing a mark in a specific place with a space in a specific place doesn't solve the problem at all. Perhaps we should fret more regarding how dipsticks like this got to be professors.

What difference would be substituting one character for that of another?

There is one particular culprit in my office who doesn't seem to EVER use the apostrophe, never mind misuse it. It takes a bit of getting using to the things he says "ill" do.

How can this misuse not be number 1?

As in (on a sign): "Develop you're (natch) photo's here"

"Half price orange's and apple's"

aaargh!

Just about my biggest bugbear with the world's apparent growing illiteracy is the inabiltity of people to differentiate between the words "lose" and "loose"... the former being another word for misplace, the latter being used to describe a knot shortly before I tighten it around their scrawny little illiterate necks!

the internet: My god! It's full of tards!

/rant

My apostrophe's what?

Mulvey, get out of it. Apostrophes, correctly used, are helpful components of punctuation. Their eradication would be a loss of clarity, even if only for moments at a time, as the reader strugles to determine which 's' that is at the end of the word. As it stands, this discombombulation only occurs when the ' is incorrectly applied; without it, every plural could potentially be a possessive, and vice-versa.

Who spells "his" or "hers" "hi's" or "her's"? No one., and "its" (possessive is exactly the same. If kids were taught this similarity, the confusion would vanish. I had to learn to follow the rules by rote, but it would have been easier to have been told this at an early stage.

Professor Christopher Mulvey ... lamented: "...To get it right, you need to look up the rules every time you think an apostrophe might be needed - and do this for the next six months in order to 'internalise' the rules."

I would like to commend the good Professor on becoming one, given that it must have taken him a good number of decades to learn even the most basic academia. Six months to learn some grammar?!

Internalise! It's everywhere these days - it's probably correct and is certainly beloved by educators across the land but in my eyes it's almost as bad as the rampant verbification and suffixage that has overrun the English language.

Mine's the one with the shortlist of words for inclusion in the next edition of the OED in the pocket.

"Rather agreeably, the 55+ age range came bottom of the class nationwide, while 25 to 34-year-olds managed to match the capital with 78 per cent of correct answers - surprising, the Telegraph notes, since the latter have not had the benefit of the "proper" old-school grammar guidance enjoyed by the former."

How rude. Do they think that schools have gone downhill so much these days that they are full of chavs like Vicky Pollard, who only turn up and write their name on the exam paper to get an A*?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7481715.stm

I just spent 20 minutes reading the grammer rules for apostrophes on wiki how. That fella that said lets just forget the apostrophe had the right idea.

Its a living language and I'll use it any way I want to, henceforeward I will decline the use of apostrophes and I urge you all to do the same.

Paris 'cos she knows when it's is a possesive pronoun !

er...damn

Sorry, Prof. Wells, but I do not see where this hopeless state exists. A number of years ago I had absolutely no problem at all knowing where the apostrophe should be used, but now after as many years of seeing it used incorrectly, I often find myself double-checking usage. Sadly, poor grammar and punctuation makes it into popular and mainstream media and press, and pointing it out only arouses ire.

I have been told that the English language is one of the harder languages in the world to learn, perhaps lending to its immense ability for absorption and flexibility. Though I still find accent rules for Spanish a little more difficult than English punctuation, though I am sure I have called myself out as an idiot for those who perfectly understand the former.

Paris, English as a first and-a-half language.

Surely the word "internalise" in Prof Mulvey's quote has been misspelt. I think the correct spelling might be R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R.

We can rant about "less" and "fewer" instead.

This simply cannot be true: after all, Ed "Talking" Balls has assured us that educational standards have risen exponentially and inexorably ever since NuLab took charge of education in this country.

I simply cannot believe that a government minister could be so wrong; and to suggest that they are sophists, or deliberately telling us untruths is blatantly an act of treason.

joke over

Keep it in there... it allows us to determine the intelligence of the author.

It's really simple... in possessive plurality, if a word ends with 's', the apostrophe comes after; otherwise it's before the 's'.

Non-possessive plurality does not need an apostrophe.

In other cases, the apostrophe indicates one of more missing letters, so it's location is obvious: they're is short for 'they are', so the apostrophe replaces the ' a'; similarly 'it's' is short for 'it is' - a replacement of the ' i'.

Now! what! about! the! exclamation! mark!?! Surely! that's! a! better! candidate! for! deletion!!!

...as the readers of the Usenet group alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe know all too well!

As a former teacher of English as a foreign language, and part-time online grammar nazi, this news saddens me. We could all learn a thing or two from Bob's attitude towards grammar.

http://www.theworldaccordingtokang.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/bob-the-angry-flower.gif

http://www.angryflower.com/plural.gif

http://www.angryflower.com/destro.gif

http://www.angryflower.com/itsits.gif

we'll becomes we ll? What's wrong with we will?

ur wrong I tells ya.

I always wanted to know why it's its and not its'.

And why do we always blindly put the punctuation inside the quotes?

If you have more than one cat, you don't write it as cat's. If you have more than one car you don't write it as car's. Why then do the vast majority of people insist on writing CV's instead of CVs. You can just about be forgiven for confusing it's and its, but why cock up a straight forward plural?

Don't give him any more exposure, please!

Also, the apostrophe isn't that hard to use!

>In other cases, the apostrophe indicates one of more missing letters, so it's location is obvious: they're is short for 'they are', so the apostrophe replaces the ' a'; similarly 'it's' is short for 'it is' - a replacement of the ' i'.

"so its location", not "so it is location".

Mine's the one without the primed petard in the pocket.

Ok not really, but what is the name for an apostrophe abuser? [apostrophiles?] and can we get the daily wail on the case? we'd all be safe then... they'd be harrassed from society.

"If the apostrophe in "people's" is supposed to go before the S because "people" is already plural, why does it still go after the S in children? (e.g., "the childrens' hats")

"Children" is the plural or child, just as "people" is the plural of person."

because your a idiot? its "children's hats"

... is advertising a new Pilate's class.

Someone was heard to comment that perhaps you should wash your hands after it... ;-)

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Gives it to whom, I ask.