I know; I shouldn’t let it bother me. After all, it’s just a tiny punctuation mark or diacritical mark, but I’m still dying to be critical when people misuse it by either not using it when they should, or using it where it doesn’t belong.
I’m talking about the apostrophe — not Frank Zappa’s great album of that name (featuring Nanook the Eskimo and the sage advice not to eat yellow snow; the ditty about St. Alphonso’s pancake breakfast (where Frank claims to have stolen the margarine); a pseudo-dirge about bromodosis; etc.), but this thing:
’
When people have a sign at the entrance to their property that says The White’s, I wonder what they’re leaving out. The White’s what? The White’s mysterious possession? The White’s house? In the latter case, it would make some sort of sense, but they probably actually meant it to be The Whites (plural, with no apostrophe) — in other words, a collection of people, a family, with the surname White live there.
The snarky, white-gloved mother-in-law in me wonders why the Whites paid no attention to the rules of grammar in grade school. I didn’t pay much attention myself, yet still I know that. But then I have to tell myself to calm down and not judge people based on their ignorance of the proper use of the apostrophe. I don’t want to be like the woodcutters in Robert Frost’s poem Two Trumps In Mud Time (where it says, “Except as a fellow handled an ax, They had no way of knowing a fool”).
In case they are willing to listen, though, the rules of apostrophe usage are really pretty simple:
Use an apostrophe either to indicate possession, such as:
My piano’s strings (yes, pianos are a stringed percussion instrument, providing keys as levers to strike the strings)
My dog’s house
Your friend’s neighbor’s swimming pool
Scott’s Bass Lessons
His parents’ new motorboat (something that belongs to a plural noun, such as parents, has the apostrophe appended after the s; if it was his or her parent’s (with the apostrophe before the s) new motorboat, you would have to wonder which parent it is that owns the motorboat, and why does the other parent not share in the ownership thereof?)
…or to show that letters have been elided (left out, omitted), IOW contractions; for example:
Rock ‘n’ Roll (which should have two apostrophes, as shown here, as both the “a” and the “d” have been left out of the word “and”)
Who’s on first? (where who’s is a contraction of “who is”, as in “who is on first?”); IOW, it should not be Whose on first? which would beg the question, “Whose what is on first — his or her foot, hand, cell phone?”
The Oakland A’s (their full name is/was the Oakland Athletics, so the apostrophe indicates that “thletic” has been replaced by the mighty seven-characters-for-the-price-of-one apostrophe)
The Sacramento A’s and The Las Vegas A’s (see above)
One other legitimate use for the apostrophe (and, admittedly, confuses things a little, because it deals with plurals and is not a contraction or a possessive) is when not to use one would be even more confusing, such as when referring to a group of letters or numbers, e.g.:
The s’s in his name are silly-sounding; a plural is being referred to, which would normally require adding an “s” without an apostrophe, but who would know what The ss in his name meant?
One of the 23’s that played in the NBA was Michael Jordan
If you find all this much ado about virtually nothing, go buy Zappa’s album for some enjoyable edification (the apostrophe is mentioned in the before-alluded-to-song Stink-foot); the other Zappas in the world will appreciate it; the Zappas’ residual payments may increase a bit; wouldn’t that be a nice thing to do, frankly?