Am I crazy because I can't stand it when people put apostrophes when they mean to simply place an additional "s" at the end of a word? For example, I read somewhere today, "I looked at her photo's." Is this correct, my friends? Such mistakes are everywhere. And I am such a maniac that I also feel the need to add that CDs are not possessive, unless you're talking about a particular CD's name or cover, and that IBMs, BMWs, TVs, and PCs work along similar lines. I can't find a rule that says I'm right about this particular gripe, but I can't find one that says I'm wrong, either. However, it only seems normal that a distinction be made between the posessive and the plural forms, and that said distinction follow the same logic used for basic common nouns (non-initial-based). If we just go running around throwing apostrophe's on everything, pretty soon all of our rule's and guideline's that make sentence's understandable will be gone, and we will be left in a chaotic land of comma's, period's and quotation mark's that have no meaning.
But above all, please remember: the apostrophe goes out the window when dealing with its overuse in the most common mistake of all: IT'S. Apostrophe with subject and verb only, people, let's get it together. C'mon now.
Glad to come across another stickler for correct grammar usage. I suppose it's only normal that we should have met on an English teaching course! Anyway, one of my major gripes also falls in the apostrophe category: the difference between your and you're. I see this mistake EVERYWHERE! "Your really inconsiderate because you let you're dog dig up my daffodils."
When I was a little girl I used to get free books all the time because I figured out that if you circled all the typos in a book and sent it back to the editor, they would in turn send their apologies with either a new book or a gift certificate. This doesn't work anymore unfortunately. I suppose it's kind of cute coming from a seven year old but kind of annoying coming from a twenty-seven year old. Anyway, the world of commerce has changed a lot in the past twenty years. I guess the customer isn't always right anymore.
Have you read "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole? I think you'd enjoy it. I'll lend it to you the next time our paths cross (hopefully soon).
Vic - yeah...man, I wish I had figured out that trick when I was seven. I think that the you're/your problem is even more annoying than the apostrophes, but there seems to have been an overload of apostrophe problems in my vicinity lately. But I couldn't acgree with you more. Nope, haven't read the book, and would love to check it out. You aren't the only person that has recommended it to me!
There is an instance where photo's could be said to be correct. The word photo is really a contraction of the word photograph, the apostrophe is therefore placed in the word photo's to indicate that there are letters missing from the original word. Therefore, if the original word was photographs then the contraction would necessarily be photo's.