Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
11/1/2015 1:36:53 PM
Subject:
RE: sim
I might add that the unpoliced use of the apostrophe should give us even more concern.
We have gotten along with the ax/axe problem. We've done it blindly and foolishly, but we've held the barricades.
I submit, however, that the indiscriminate use of the apostrophe is truly the knell of doom. There's no surer sign of barbarians at the gate than when school children are allowed, willy-nilly, to fling the apostrophe about with impunity.
What harm can it do to supply an apostrophe with the possessive "its"?
I'll tell you:
The contraction "it's" no longer has exclusive rights to the mark.
Now there's no distinction between the two. I leave it to your imagination what could happen if other punctuation marks were used with such cavalier abandon.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-- W.B. Yeats
