I love apostrophes

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: August 6, 2009

OK, so now I am going to admit my quirky pet peeve:

Misplaced apostrophes.

As I told the editor of this comforting web site, upon which I stumbled last week, I have suffered apostrophe abuse so much and for so long that I had come to feel that I was alone.

Rejoice; it isn’t true!

Then I came across this Associated Press story. It examines the disappearance of apostrophes from location names across the Northeastern United States.

This excerpt, in particular, made me laugh:

State Archivist Gregory Sanford said he had been on a one-man campaign to generate interest in restoring apostrophes to Vermont place names, without much luck.

One that bugs him is the name of a mountain whose shape is so iconic that it’s stamped on the state quarter: Camels Hump. Trouble is, leaving the apostrophe out of the first word runs the risk of making the second look like a verb, creating what Sanford called an “unfortunate” image.

Ha ha ha! And you thought grammar was dull.