When did plural words become possessive?
I ask this quite seriously because I’ve noticed that this plural problem has spread at an alarming rate from something done by those little corner market employees who are recent immigrants who barely speak English, to something much larger. I always assumed with those little recent immigrant market employees that they did their best using a dictionary to translate apple to apples and just gave up and threw in the apostrophe, turning it into “apple’s.”
That was then. Now it is quite clear that this lack of understanding of even a most basic tenet of English grammar has slipped to the masses who were born and raised here. Many of them are seemingly well-educated, so grammar and usage should not be an issue for them. Yet it is, and we can’t blame this problem on texting, since all the vowels are still present in these perverted plurals.
I cringed but let it slide the first time I saw a handwritten sign in a small neighborhood market for “apple’s,” but this problem has become so pervasive throughout our culture that I can no longer remain silent. In the last month, I’ve come across these damn possessive plurals in so many places. The thing that worries me most is that educated people have allowed their grammar to slip so far as to slap apostrophes everywhere. Willy nilly, these damn apostrophes are spreading like English Ivy in my garden.
In the last week, I’ve seen these perturbing possessive plurals in more places than I could have imagined. In a blog filled with the writings of WRITERS, one posting member stated that she’d do something on “Tuesday’s.” The dry cleaner around the corner from my house– a dry cleaner frequented by Members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices — put out a sign that the shop would be closed on “Sunday’s in August.”
It goes on and on. All of it is WRONG. So wrong that I now find myself fighting the urge to SCREAM when I see these possessive plurals. I already have possessive terriers. I refuse to become my terrier’s or terriers’ possession (which of those you choose depends on whether you believe one or both of my terriers are possessive of me)!
Please, people, help me bring an end to this debacle! These pernicious possessive plurals must perish! Let’s start the battle here and now!
End the possessive plural before its plurality is so great that there is no return to reason.
