The decline of the apostrophe

6 Minute English

语言学习

2020-01-09

6 分钟
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  • Hello, this is Six Minute English, I'm Georgina.

  • And I'm Rob.

  • Are you a punctuation pedant?

  • Do you get upset, annoyed or angry if you see punctuation being used incorrectly,

  • particularly apostrophes?

  • Ah, well, it depends.

  • Usually, I'm pretty chilled out about it.

  • But sometimes, just sometimes, it really winds me up.

  • For example, if I see a sign for taxes at a train station,

  • and it says taxi apostrophe S.

  • Ah, why, why?

  • The apostrophe is not used to show there is more than one.

  • It's used to show there is a missing letter,

  • or that the word is a possessive.

  • It's just wrong.

  • So that does kind of make my blood boil.

  • So when you say you're pretty chilled about it,

  • you mean, okay, okay, I'm not chilled at all.