It's common to blame falling education standards for all the apostrophes that either go AWOL or turn up uninvited. It's easy to find examples of poor apostrophe hygiene throughout history, though, so this is just another bit of education-bashing. The eviction of the Waterstone's apostrophe (or should than now be 'of Waterstones' apostrophe?) has led to the poor thing setting up a twitter account as @SadApostrophe to aid his/her/its search for another job. Well, I've a suggestion.
The much-maligned greengrocer's apostrophe actually has a valid claim to existence in some cases. Researching Renaissance maps for a historical novel, I came across some that marked dangers to look out for - of the 'hereby monsters' variety, but more plausible. Around the Caribbean, the sailor was to look out for Tornado's. There were no other misplaced apostrophes. Do greengrocers sell Tornado's? I think not.
But suddenly, all becomes clear.... the English spelling is 'tornadoes', of course. But 'tornado' - which is first found in the 1550s, just 20 years before the period I was researching - is probably a mangled form of the Spanish 'tronada'. Navigators who recognised the foreignness of 'tornado' were perhaps using the apostrophe to indicate the 'e' missing from a normally-formed English plural of a word ending in 'o', as in 'toes'. (One theory suggests that the possessive apostrophe always represents a missing 'e', that of the Old English genitive ending '-es'. I don't agree with that theory, but it's there if you like it.)
So that would mean Potatoes can legitimately be rendered Potato's and Tomatoes can be rendered Tomato's. But there is no excuse for Sprout's, Apple's or Pear's.
Could someone call @SadApostrophe and ask him to send in a CV, please?
7 comments:
My late English teacher would have been happy to give him a job as "Apostrophe in Residence". Her other job was to teach journalists basic English grammar. It is very obvious which of the older journalists on our state newspaper had the benefit of her teaching!
Language changes over time. Time to dump some of the more complicated punctuation. Definitely.
Ah ... if the apostrophe for tomato's etc is to denote the missing 'e' then there could conceivably be a case for the Olde Englishe Sproutes and Peares - or 'Sprout's and Pear's' ...
Still, it;'s sad to learen that the apostrophe has had to go job hunting. Maybe it could take a drop and do holiday cover for the comma, or job share with the semi-colon?
Ooops. seems the keyboard, incensed at the plight of the apostrophe was doing some kind of punction protest in my post!
Anything that brings solace to Sad Apostrophe is okay by me! I will tweet this and point it out to him! There is also nothing terribly hard about punctuation. Most people only have to be shown when they're kids in school....it's precisely NOT surgery or rocket science!
Loved this Anne esp the historical part as have just been in combat with an editor who had all sorts of hates esp. capitals - as in the Poison Dart Frog and Okavango Swamps (says herpetologists know nothing of English!)and whether to use the collective plural (my term not his)for lion and elephant or the proper plural. So what about fish then?
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