"Our sport is your sports punishment," proclaimed the T-shirt worn by one of my students this morning, and I got the point but nevertheless I was overwhelmed by a mad desire to insert an apostrophe: "Our sport is your sport's punishment." If I'd had a permanent marker handy, I might have done it.
It's a curse, I tell you. If I could stop caring about the correct placement of apostrophes, my life would be much less stressful; I could glance right past that T-shirt without a pang instead of investing emotional energy in the absent apostrophe. I could read student papers that leave apostrophes out of you're, we're, and it's all day long without banging my head against the wall. Why can't I just stop caring?
The other solution, of course, would be for the rest of the world to just learn how to use apostrophes correctly. It's not that difficult, people! You can do this! But you'd better do it quickly because I have a permanent marker and I'm not afraid to use it!
2 comments:
I think you're blowing this whole apostrophe situation out of proportion. We're you to consider this further, you'd see that the problem is not so great as it seems.
Darn that English upbringing! That was supposed to be "I think your blowing this whole ..."
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