On the death of the apostrophe and the evolution of discourse

See update for November 17, 2021, at end of post.


In the last English class I ever took, I had a professor who made a point of confessing that she couldn’t remember all the grammar rules either. She was about to retire—I think she did so following the quarter after I took her class. A point to be taken here is that these rules are arbitrary; what they mostly really amount to is a description of what “looks right” from the peculiar perspective of a someone we only sometimes know.[1]

This was a class largely about pedagogy[2] and I still consider the methodology—as near as I was able to determine, this was purely anecdote—used to justify certain pedagogical methods dubious. As such, I had my differences with that professor and indeed the orthodoxy that now so often imposes these methods throughout primary, secondary, and even community college education. But she endeared herself to me with her confession and I truly hope she is enjoying her retirement.

Language evolves and some of what’s highlighted in a Telegraph article as a decline in formal usage truly is fuddy duddy stuff. Crying about split infinitives is and always has been, after all, pretty fucking weird. But the apostrophe?[3] Admittedly, I’m getting old,[4] but if we’re losing the mark that signifies contractions and distinguishes some possessives from some plurals, it might be time to die.

Much of the alleged decline is observed in social media,[5] which I think introduces a skew. First, Twitter has an arbitrary 280-character maximum per tweet; there are certainly ways around this, but, as the Telegraph article acknowledges, it tends to impose brevity.[6] I wince a little bit even when I see an ampersand (“&”) substituting for a spelled-out “and,” which actually violates no rule of grammar I’m aware of. (But remember that retiring professor’s confession, bless her heart.)

A question there is how much this will bleed into mainstream usage,[7] which in turn raises a question of just when we include social media in the mainstream: I see plenty of tweets quoted and linked to as sources in the newsletters I receive each day. Context is always important in evaluating language use: How do we speak to our friends? Acquaintances? Loved ones? Superiors? And on Twitter? There are, and always have been, differences here and while they are significant, it is important not to make too much of them. The binary between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ at the very least lacks nuance.

But second, I think social media changes who we hear from. We hear more from communities of color. We hear more from the poor. We hear more from the working class. Language styles have always varied with educational attainment, race, class, and, yes, even gender; they mark people, unfortunately as factors in determining who is taken how seriously and with what authority, determining who is promoted, who is left to languish. It isn’t, by any means, a complete explanation for unequal outcomes in a profoundly unequal society, but it’s long been observed as a contributing factor.

Third, language, especially informal language, does indeed evolve. As I read my Twitter newsfeed some days, I’m mystified: I have no idea what younger people are saying because their use of slang has changed so dramatically from my own. In my day, “dope” could refer to an idiot, to marijuana, or to drug use—as with athletes and performance enhancing drugs—generally. Now, it, like “fire,” can be a superlative, expressing affirmation. When I say an observation, here of a purported decline in formal language use, is skewed, I assume a baseline. The Telegraph article refers to past usage,[8] but given linguistic evolution, that baseline may not be valid.

Controversially, there have been attempts to “reclaim” some words, such as ‘slut,’ such as the n-word, such as that b-word that rhymes with witch. The claim has been that by ‘reclaiming’ such words, arbitrarily stigmatized groups may reduce the force of such words. I see no evidence that this actually works but it has become common.

We tend to assume an upward progression with evolution, but sometimes it takes a wrong turn. Mutations are more often detrimental than beneficial.

I have had passengers who dropped the n-word and the b-word seemingly every other word. I now forbid derogatory language to identities with signs in my car and passengers violate my rules only at the risk I may give them a low rating, which ultimately may make it more difficult for them to get rides in the future.

But I have also had passengers stridently reject the notion of ‘reclaiming’ hateful vocabulary, such as the n-word, such as the b-word. “Whose words are these to ‘reclaim,’” one asked. For these passengers, the n-word evokes legacies of slavery, the plantation, sharecropping, and Jim Crow, and the b-word legacies of pure, unadulterated misogyny.

When I was a child, there was a kind of ‘joke,’ an “ethnic joke.” Such ‘jokes,’ were considered impolite even if we thought them hilarious. I think even my racist maternal grandfather warned me against them.[9]

I occasionally see jokes taking the same rhetorical form as “ethnic jokes,” but now directed against, especially, straight white males. The problem now, as it was then, is that these jokes affirm particular identities, then white anglo-saxon Protestant, today non-binary, at the expense of others. The defense of the modern form is of a kind with those who protest that Black people cannot be racist; they conflate bigotry with power relations,[10] neglecting that speech, and as we have seen with Donald Trump and his often white working class supporters, especially hate speech, has its own not inconsiderable power.

If we are generally to object to hate speech against ethnic and subaltern groups, we must surely object to these forms of hate speech as well. Here, I will indeed, to borrow from William Buckley, “stand[] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it,”[11] and trust that no one will accuse me of merely appealing to tradition to the degree that conservatives so often have.

Evolution proceeds through mutation—really change—and natural selection. The moral evaluation of change follows largely from perspective. Mutations are beneficial from an organism’s perspective often enough to be of concern to us with, for example, the COVID-19 virus,[12] but mostly and fundamentally they are rolls of the dice: There are lots of ways to roll two dice for a sum of seven, not so many for two or twelve, and the payoffs in craps vary accordingly. Hate speech, too, evolves, but our moral evaluation of it need not; it is no less to be condemned for its evolution.

Charitably, the Telegraph article can be seen as mourning a purported decline in formal usage.[13] Implicit here is an assumption that formal is correct. I might mention here as well that I think much of what I find in supposedly authoritative style guides,[14] is flatly wrong, at least according to the rules I learned in elementary school.

So who decides what is ‘correct?’ On what authority? Who allocated to them that authority? For what reason? And why do we accept that authority? To what degree are we relegating subaltern speech an inferior status on plain, old-fashioned bias, a bias promulgated through education? With such questions, we expose the rules of language as socially constructed, arbitrary, carrying only the force of a shifting common consent, a consent, really, that varies according to your reference group. The Telegraph appeals to antiquity and to, at best, a dubious and certainly uncommon authority.

Repeatedly during Trump’s presidency, I saw, and probably even sometimes participated in, mocking Trump supporters’ linguistic errors. I mean no equivalence here as to the hate speech they enable as “speaking his mind” or to their protest against “political correctness,” but there is a hypocrisy in protesting the unfairness of race, class, and other -isms while sneering at the linguistic errors of the less educated.

Ultimately, the Telegraph article makes two errors: First, it appeals to a dubious authority with so-called ‘formal’ usage, while neglecting the biases embedded with this appeal. Second, with that appeal, it appeals solely to tradition, curiously assuming that the past is a reliable guide in evaluating the present or future. This is not to say, as with manifestations of hate speech, that present forms cannot be evaluated critically, but the assumptions in the article simply do not withstand scrutiny.


Update, November 17, 2021: I have added a link to a PDF version of the signs I post in my car in the original text. This latest version includes QR codes with links to relevant blog posts.

  1. [1]Associated Press, The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law 2018 (New York: Basic, 2018); Ann Raimes, Keys for Writers, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2000); Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 8th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005).
  2. [2]I was in my Master’s program; the class was to qualify as a graduate writing assistant. A premise in this class, which I embrace, is that pedagogy can benefit from required writing in nearly all, if not all, fields. Writing is excellent not merely for recording but for exposing thinking, and the flaws therein.
  3. [3]Camilla Turner, “Apostrophe is marked for extinction as language becomes less formal,” Telegraph, November 13, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-formal/
  4. [4]As a recent mistake with a beard trimmer further confirms. The world and I would have been just fine without seeing what is now revealed.
  5. [5]Camilla Turner, “Apostrophe is marked for extinction as language becomes less formal,” Telegraph, November 13, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-formal/
  6. [6]Camilla Turner, “Apostrophe is marked for extinction as language becomes less formal,” Telegraph, November 13, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-formal/
  7. [7]Camilla Turner, “Apostrophe is marked for extinction as language becomes less formal,” Telegraph, November 13, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-formal/
  8. [8]Camilla Turner, “Apostrophe is marked for extinction as language becomes less formal,” Telegraph, November 13, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-formal/
  9. [9]This memory is hazy but I associate it with sitting in his bedroom. (The incessant conflict between him and my grandmother, who also spent most of her time in her bedroom, rendered the common areas of the house a sort of no man’s land.)
  10. [10]George Yancy, “No, Black People Can’t Be ‘Racists,’” Truthout, October 20, 2021, https://truthout.org/articles/no-black-people-cant-be-racists/
  11. [11]William F. Buckley, “Our Mission Statement,” National Review, November 19, 1955, https://www.nationalreview.com/1955/11/our-mission-statement-william-f-buckley-jr/
  12. [12]More formally, the SARS-CoV-2 virus: World Health Organization, “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19),” n.d., https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
  13. [13]Camilla Turner, “Apostrophe is marked for extinction as language becomes less formal,” Telegraph, November 13, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-formal/
  14. [14]Associated Press, The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law 2018 (New York: Basic, 2018); Ann Raimes, Keys for Writers, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2000); Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 8th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005).

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