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> Has anyone out there read Charles Larson's November 6 essay in Newsweek
> about the decline of the apostrophe?
> In the essay (ITS ACADEMIC, OR IS IT?) Larson posits that people under the
> age of 35 generally have no idea how the apostrophe ought to be used. Ever
> since a colleague pointed the article out to me, I've become hyper-aware of
> how often the apostrophe is misused today.
> Is the apostrophe on the way out of the English language? Should we be
> fighting on the front to keep the apostrophe alive or mourning its passing?
I haven't noticed any increase in the misuse of the apostrophe. It just
seems to be about as misunderstood as when I was in elementary school (a
long time ago in a galaxy far, far away). Its' sad. ;-)
Now the hyphen -- there's a much abused and misused bit of punctuation.
It really seems to be a terminal case, even among tech writers. I
regularly see compound modifiers left unhyphenated, while other word
pairs gain needlessly gain a hyphen. Have you noticed?
John Wilcox <john -at- syntax -dot- com>
Senior Technical Writer
Syntax, Inc., 840 S. 333rd St., Federal Way, WA 98003-6343 USA
voice 206-838-2626, fax 206-838-9836, http://www.syntax.com
