Apostrophes

I am completely fed up with people misusing apostrophes even other authors who really should know better (where are the editors for goodness sake?!) so I’ve decided to share an excerpt from from my book which will clear up any ambiguity.

Chapter 8

FLYING APOSTROPHES

‘I kind of like the local language. It rolls nicely off the tongue,’ said Cora as she and Loopy wandered down the main road. They were taking the opportunity to observe more humans and their behaviour. ‘It’s very descriptive. The sort of language you can really get your teeth into.’

Loopy couldn’t reply as there were people around but she gazed at Cora. She was puzzled. English was descriptive all right but she found that when she was speaking any language she most definitely had to keep her teeth out of it or there would be all sorts of trouble.

A small shiny blue and purple sweet wrapper blew across the pavement. Loopy thought it looked interesting. She didn’t know exactly what it was but she pounced anyway. She caught it in her teeth. Gave it a quick chew. It tasted sugary sweet and slightly sticky. Nice.

She gave it another quick chew then swallowed it, feeling quite pleased with herself. She had captured something tasty.

They came to some shops. The first one had stalls on the pavement that were loaded with a brightly coloured assortment of items. Cora recognised the crimson apples, the ripe bananas, and juicy strawberries.

But there were many other items of various shapes and sizes which she did not recognise. She noticed large orange balls with pitted shiny skin about the size of her hand and something similar in smaller yellow oval shapes. There were squishy looking red balls each with some kind of a dead green spider on top. Beside them were white carrots and miniature green trees. Some other things looked like apples with smooth fur.

She wondered what all this weird stuff was. Surely this couldn’t all be human food.

A handwritten sign on the shop window read: ALL TYPES OF FRUIT’S SOLD HERE. Cora rolled her eyes. By now she had learnt enough of the language to know that this was nonsensical.

‘Just look at that,’ she complained to Loopy. ‘Don’t they know there’s no need for an apostrophe there? And, as if that’s not bad enough, the plural of fruit is actually still fruit. Are Earthlings really that dim that they can’t even speak their own language properly?’

Loopy nodded.

Further on they stopped outside the local library. It also had a sign: SECOND HAND BOOK’S FOR SALE.

‘Look, Cora,’ whispered Loopy, ‘another one.’

‘Oh, skorbot.’ Cora was exasperated. ‘Don’t these idiots know you only use an apostrophe when you’ve dropped out a letter?’

Loopy nodded again.

‘Or to show ownership. Like “the dog’s dinner” for one dog or “the dogs’ dinner” for more than one.’

Loopy hoped there was only one dog. She wasn’t prepared to share her dinner.

‘It seems that they just stick random apostrophes anywhere they see the letter s. Honestly, isn’t it annoying that these people don’t even know how to punctuate their own language? They’ve got apostrophyitis!’

Loopy was pretty sure that word wasn’t in the lexicon. She wondered if it was something to eat. Or an illness. Maybe humans got it if they ate the dog’s dinner. Served them right.

A young man came out and placed a sign on the pavement. It read: BISCUIT’S HALF PRICE.

‘Oh Loopy, this is dreadful.’ Cora sighed. ‘These idiots are destroying their lovely language.’

‘I can put it right,’ Loopy whispered. She hesitated, knowing that Cora didn’t like these Earth people and their nitwit ways.

Cora’s shoulders slumped as she rolled her eyes.

‘Okay, Loop,’ she sighed, ‘Just this once. Go on then.’

As Loopy linked into SLOS, the sky suddenly became dark as gravity wrenched every single apostrophe that was in the wrong place straight up into the sky. Signs, newspapers, Solicitors’ letters, badly written novels, teachers’ reports, children’s homework.

Grammar was suddenly corrected as apostrophes were tugged free, catapulted through the atmosphere, and launched into space where it was already dark and they couldn’t be seen.

Now ALL TYPES OF FRUIT (Loopy had also extracted the unnecessary S which was currently whizzing past Neptune) were being sold at the fruit shop. SECOND HAND BOOKS were on sale at the Public Library and BISCUITS were half price in the supermarket.

People wandered into the street and looked up in puzzlement.

‘Was there supposed to be a solar eclipse today?’ one man asked his wife.

‘Couldn’t have been,’ she replied. ‘That was too quick to be an eclipse.’

After some shoulder shrugging, people returned to their normal activities and quickly forgot about the strange and unexplained dark sky.

They were too self absorbed to even notice that their ridiculous punctuation had been corrected.

Cora had had enough of earth adults. It looked like the children on this planet were much more intelligent. She hoped so for the sake of the planet’s future. If it had one.