Is learning to use apostrophes correctly an outmoded skill?

Answer 1

I think apostrophes are often ignored, misjudged, and misused. Semi-colons; replace but, or, and; organize independently related elements within a sentence; corral groups of commas; seem to be in peril of becoming the vestiges of punctuation.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote "...do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college."

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Answer 2

It's true that this is something people don't seem to learn anymore. Or if they do, it isn't obvious. Unlike the lower case i or the abbreviation of you to a single letter u, this one can actually cause problems. The skill is not outmoded because it is still necessary for those wanting to communicate a specific meaning clearly and quickly.

One important reason apostrophes are necessary in English is to distinguish between the plural and the possessive. This is something we need for clear communication.

"Dads" means something different from "Dad's."

Dropping the apostrophes would lead to ambiguity [when a phrase, sentence, or word could mean more than one thing, and thus is unclear].

Another use is for contractions, when a couple of words are spliced together, as in "can't" for "can not." "Cant" is already a word with at least five different meanings, none of which have to do with "can not." Although we could figure out which one you meant from the context, it's faster and clearer when the apostrophe is used correctly.

In casual communication, say between friends using instant messages, there may be less of a need for absolute clarity. And if you're paying by the character, sending an apostrophe may seem like a waste. These technical and cultural changes in the way we communicate might seem to be pushing apostrophe use to extinction. But this sort of thing has happened before, and the apostrophe survived.

The first message sent by the telegraph on May 24, 1844, invented by Samuel Morse was a quote from Numbers XXIII, 23 -- "What hath God wrought?" It's old fashioned language, even for 1844, but perfectly correct.

As the telegraph came into widespread use, however, "telegraphic writing" came to mean writing that left out connecting words such as "a" and "the" -- punctuation was limited as well. One might think that this compressed writing would be clearer and more efficient, but the opposite was true. The messages got very unclear.

Web content developers and technical writers today loathe "telegraphic writing" -- which still exists, even though the only telegraphs are in museums -- precisely because it is unclear and ambiguous.

Answer 3

Apparently so, and it started around 1980. A result of "whole learning" maybe? It's not only an American phenomenon, either: I saw it in Australia in 1986.

1980 is also the year Reagan got elected and began his war on the middle class. Illiteracy of the masses has always been a tool of fascism, so who knows?

Answer 4

Unfortunately it does look that way, doesn't it?