Those daggy grocer's

Apostrophe abuse ranks somewhere between whale hunting and the Government hocking off state-owned assets as a reliable topic for engendering outbursts of indignity. My own heart did a little leap for joy when I spotted this misuse at our local Mitre 10. Note the (admittedly difficult to see) apostrophe in "wok's", after which the author seemingly lost heart, interest or confidence, or ran out of apostrophes, and thus failed to continue the misuse in the following items.

Apostrophes get misused in so many ways that if they were human, they'd surely have their own lobby group to defend their downtrodden selves. The most popular misuse - affectionately known as the grocer's apostrophe - is as shown here, where it's slapped, often randomly, onto a plural. For some mysterious reason, it almost seems like a law that grocers must write potato's, bean's, cucumber's and so on. Or potatos', beans', cucumbers'. 

But before coming down too hard on your local vege stall, note that apostrophes have their detractors. George Bernard Shaw called them "uncouth bacilli" and British phonetician Dr John Wells said they're "a waste of time". He speaks 10 languages, so he probably has some idea of what he's talking about.

Apostrophes are a fairly recent addition to English, having been borrowed from the French in the 16th century. They've been put to all kinds of tasks ever since (who writes "look'd" a la Shakespeare these days?), and one of the challenges for anyone more interested in selling broccoli than mastering the fine points of English is keeping track of all those uses. My heart goes out to the greengrocer's (sic). 

Then there are those who take the opposite view. The Apostrophe Protection Society (Motto: The whales can go hang) deserves grudging respect for its efforts "to protect, promote and defend the differences between plural and possessive". So far, though, it's not looking too good for them. A 2008 survey found that nearly half of the UK adults polled were unable to use the apostrophe correctly.

---