I know that there are even skilled writer who fear The Dreaded Apostrophe, they're not stupid or incapable, just suffering the effect of poor teaching.

It was rather appalling to watch an eight year old schoolgirl on television a few days ago, as she went around skilfully correcting a number of public apostrophe errors, only to interview a learned language professor who suggested she was wasting her time, and that everyone should forget the apostrophe and just write as they speak because we can't "see" apostrophes in spoken language language.

I don't know what his name was, but the man is a fool. In fact, in terms of language, I'd call him a dangerous fool. While he may be correct in his assertion than an apostrophe cannot be "seen" by the eye in speech, there can be no doubt that it can be "seen" by the mind when listening to a speaker, as the context, tone, and inflection of the their speech conveys much of the meaning of their word, in the same way as the apostrophe does for the written word. It was refreshing to see the little schoolgirl had a better grasp of language that he did (whoever employs him should fire him and hire her), and she was even able to make it clear that the dreaded txtspk of mobile phones was fine on phones, but had no place in when proper words were being used for common conversation and communication. She basically wiped the floor with him.

Apostrophes are policed quite strictly within the main site, and hopefully all but the most subtle uses (and there are cases where the intended meaning can require some careful thought and analysis regarding the final placement of the apostrophe) are handles correctly.

To this end, and to help others who may have suffered from the teaching of any other fools who think along the same lines as the one referred to above, the following site may help simplify the position of the apostrophe, and alleviate their misguided thinking...

The Dreaded Apostrophe

If you don't have time to read the whole thing, then it basically boils down to one simple rule: Use an apostrophe when letters are missing.

Granted, you may have to know a bit more about language than most in order to be able to apply that rule in every case, but if you read the whole site, and the examples, it works. And anything that boils down to one rule can't be bad.

Bring back Victor Borge I say.  Remember his phonetic punctuation?  I guess the younger ones reading this will not have a clue as to what I am referring to.

If you mean am I old enough to have had my education driven in with the aid of a strip Lochgelly leather then you are quite correct.

The Captain has hit the nail on the head with his comments about the old text.

One of the reasons those old texts can still be read, and read with relative ease, is because of the adherence to those rule of grammar that fools like the professor mentioned above suggests be ignored and forgotten.

The old documents don't have "no spelling and little punctuation" - they have spelling and punctuation of their time, which evolved over hundreds of years from local usage, and languages such as German and French which have given us much of the vocabulary we have in English today. The process is one of evolution and derivation. You only have to try writing (as in composing, not handwriting) to find out that if you have to make up new words and names for your text, then it's not just a case of stringing together some random vowels and consonants, but you have to hit the dictionaries and language references to find sources to produce the relevant parts of words that can be strung together to make sense, and mean something to the eventual reader.

The common core of language evolves with usage, yes it changes, but it does so in accordance with the evolution of those rules as well.

And, it is a pity that that they don't pull put the Borge tapes any more. Comedy made without using foul language, ignorance, abuse, or the expelling of bodily fluids and gasses makes a nice change from what passes as "clever" nowadays.