Bad Grammar. Init?

Right then, the first thing to point out is that since I am not English, and coupled with the fact that I was the only person in my year at school who did not study English Higher, I am almost certainly not qualified to talk about bad English grammar or spelling. Thus, this blog is like a one-legged, rhythmically-challenged, tone-deaf person criticising the tap-dancing skills of others.

Be that as it may, it does not stop bad grammar being something which makes me screw up my eyes, grit my teeth, wince and recoil, shaking my head. You just experimented with that sequence of expressions, didn’t you. My absolute nemesis is the badly placed or completely spurious apostrophe. Clearly, the decision to go vocal about this is a risky one, as it becomes more critical than normal for me to check that there are none of the afore-mentioned offenders putting in an appearance somewhere in the text. How ironic would that be?? 

For me, there are different categories of poorly-used apostrophes, verging from acceptable to just plain wrong. Some I can understand because the rules are thoroughly confusing, and remind me of the rules which did the email rounds a few years ago, the basic premise of which was that if the people who make the rules suspect that the rest of us have figured any or all of them out, they are at liberty to change any or all them immediately and without notice. Some English grammar rules remind me somewhat of the minefield of the random German plural, the two virtually interchangeable varieties of French past tense and the vagaries of the key of C# Major. I may have ranted about this latter item before. Sadly this is Beethoven’s fault, for writing my favourite piece of piano music in my least favourite key (and then insisting upon sharpening a sharp thus making it a natural…I mean, come on Ludwig, I understand that becoming deaf was a career-threatening development for a composer, but it wasn’t really OUR fault as such so there was really no need to take it out on us). Note the correctly positioned apostrophe in that last sentence. Ha!

Falling into this category is the wrangle about where to put the apostrophe denoting ownership by a plural entity, for example the toys belonging to the children. I’ll admit, that’s not clear cut, very annoying and just flipping typical of the English language, TBH. Thus anyone who gets this wrong in future correspondence with me will avoid public criticism, mainly because I will either not notice it, or notice it and assume the version you have chosen is the correct one, since I don’t actually know any better. I think it should be “the children’s toys”, since it denotes the toys belonging to the children. But I don’t know for sure and I’m definitely not brave enough to place a bet on it.

Others are far less forgivable, for instance if I had written that as “other’s”… Just, NO. Particularly annoying are the ones where a standard plural is apostrophised. I mean, why?? “Who let the dog’s out?” The dog is out of what? It reduces the whole meaning of the sentence to rubble.

One of the things I have learned, as the mother of children who are just starting to grapple with the written English word, is that English is not logical. An apostrophe marks a missing letter, unless of course it’s one of the exceptions to this rule (for instance when we shorten road to Rd or Saint to St). An apostrophe denotes ownership. Except for personal pronouns of course (yours, theirs etc). An apostrophe can be used to indicate the structure of unusual words. Except when it isn’t. You see? So basically, I’m ok with a misplaced apostrophe as long as I don’t know it’s misplaced. Oblivion, that’s the key.