Texting killed the apostrophe years before Twitter

I think the demise of the apostrophe began years before Twitter existed (News, Issue 620, page 9). I trace its decline to the early 2000s, when mobile texting suddenly exploded in popularity. I remember being surprised that educated people with a decent grasp of grammar often abandoned these rules when texting.

One former English teacher told me that grammar has always changed over the years, so there was little point getting upset about mistakes made when texting. He said that what mattered more was being able to understand the message. Perhaps he’s right, but it always jarred with me when I received a message that contained ‘dont’ instead of ‘don’t’, or ‘Ive’ instead of ‘I’ve’. To this day, I always punctuate my phone messages and emails correctly, though I sometimes wonder if the people who read them are really bothered. Jim Biggs

I’m not convinced that social media has led to people not using apostrophes. I worked as a secretary in a solicitor’s office in the 1970s and 1980s and would read many handwritten letters from the public that misused the apostrophe. It was very rare to read a letter that used it correctly after a plural noun, and people would often get ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ mixed up. Perhaps the difference these days is that fewer people are bothered about maintaining standards in grammar and are prepared to let it slide because writing online is now so widespread. In a century’s time I’m sure the internet will have rendered more than just the apostrophe obsolete. Alison Shaw