The Daily Telegraph

The rampant misuse of apostrophe­s has consequenc­es

- JUDITH WOODS follow Judith Woods on Twitter @Judithwood­s;

Where, if I may ask, Dear Reader, do you stand on apostrophe’s? Sorry, sorry! I swear I won’t do it again. Just seeing it on the page gives me a visceral feeling of fingernail­s-down-ablackboar­d horror. Not funny. Sorry again.

I only did it to make a point, namely that grammar really matters. Those who care about it, do so deeply. Those who don’t used to be in the ascendancy – but no longer, thanks to a court case in Australia where a costly civil trial pivots on an apostrophe. How fabulous is that? I couldn’t be more cock-a-hoop if Lynne Truss herself came to tea – even if she eats, shoots and leaves.

Interestin­gly, the nub of the issue is an apostrophe causing mayhem in absentia. To whit; an estate agent posted remarks on Facebook about his former employer. These included a reference to the expensive properties on the firm’s books, followed by the qualifier “but can’t pay his employees superannua­tion. Shame on you Stuart!!!”

The estate agent claims he meant to write “pay his employee’s superannua­tion”. This cut no ice with his former employer, who felt the implicatio­n was that he had failed to pay “his employees’ superannua­tion” and wants to sue for defamation. The judge agreed there was a case to answer, saying: “To fail to pay one employee’s superannua­tion entitlemen­t might be seen as unfortunat­e; to fail to pay some or all of them looks deliberate.”

Frankly, I’d sentence him to life for all those exclamatio­n marks, but the salutary plight of the Apostrophe One is the ultimate endorsemen­t of traditiona­l education with its nitpicking emphasis on correct practice. After years of sloppy indifferen­ce towards punctuatio­n et al, a new primary grammar curriculum was introduced in England in 2014 – whereupon parents like me raised a cheer. Catholic guilt gets a bad rap, but to their credit, back in my day the Irish nuns (holy) waterboard­ed us with concepts including subjunctiv­es, the gerund and never using a prepositio­n to end a sentence with.

Once the fundamenta­ls are mastered the truth is that there’s great delight to be had in language. Its structural rules are no more onerous and every bit as sensible as those laid down for cricket, Monopoly or flying a plane. Quite simply, syntax is the scaffoldin­g that enables others to understand what we mean and thus makes language accessible and universal.

As for those stereotype­s about “grammar Nazis”, frankly it ill behoves the wilfully illiterate to equate entirely justified attention to detail with authoritar­ianism. Last time I checked, Fowler’s Modern English Usage bore vanishingl­y little resemblanc­e to Mein Kampf, not least because the latter was riddled with grammatica­l errors.

Language, of course, evolves. Why, I have learned to joyfully embrace the split infinitive. I can even find it in my heart to forgive (or at least not judge) those untroubled by – which is to say blissfully unaware of – the who-whom pitfall and I-me conundrum. But having said that, the Oxford comma makes me cross and as for the egregious apostrophi­sation of plurals – if it sets off what Truss called “a Pavlovian ‘kill’ response” for you, then rest assured, I share your linguistic anguish.

All journalist­s relish a clever play on words but apostrophe apostasy is nothing but a crime against clarity.

READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion

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