Open Letter

Dear Losers Users of the English Language,

Greetings, from the humble Apostrophe. Hope this letter finds you in good linguistic health.

I’m writing this to bring to your attention the gross injustice and pain that you’re causing me by misusing me in your written communications, not to mention sheer negligence when you skip writing me in a fit of laziness and/or ignorance.

Let me give you some background on my antecedants.

I’m a punctuation mark. I look like a single quotation mark, but that’s exactly where the similarity ends. I’m used under two broad conditions -

1. When you’re so lazy that you omit writing down certain letters. Example, don’t (where you omitted the ‘o’ of ‘not’), you’re (where you omitted the ‘a’ of ‘are’) and the likes.

2. When you want to talk about things you own, or in clearer terms, possess. Example, ‘This is John’s umbrella’ – I denote that the umbrella belongs to John.

Now to the things that cause me untold agony. It seems that a lot of you have absolutely no idea how and when to use me. Or more specifically, when not to use me. See, I’m a beautiful punctuation mark bringing a lot of meaning into your otherwise mundane words and I would expect atleast a cursory knowledge of my usage before you take it upon yourself to murder English grammar in cold blood with your humungous ignorance.

You do not use me for denoting a plural. No, you don’t. If you’re eating bananas, its “bananas” you should be writing, not “banana’s”!

You do not use me with possessive pronouns – like “hers”, “his”, “yours”, “its”. Especially “its”! The only time you use me as “it’s” is when you’re leaving out the “i” of “is” in “it is”. Capiche?

You do not use me with an “s” when the noun you’re referring to is already plural. There are no “kings’s crowns”, it’s just “kings’ crowns”.

And for the umpteenth time, “you’re” is not the same as “your”. If you do not realize that, you have no business conversing in English, please revert to using sign language, which honestly suits you best.

These are just some of the cases I have mentioned here. For more information, please take some time to read through the umpteen sites that have been opened in my name (bless their souls!), for my correct usage.

If you think I’m being unduly rude in this matter, please understand that it’s because of ages of gross misuse perpetrated by you and your fellow people and I’ve now officially run out of patience and hence am completely justified in using the language I deem fit to address you.

I do hope you appreciate my importance in the written language. If this kind of misuse does not stop, there will come a day when my friends and I will become extinct from this beautiful language and you all would have evolved backwards into using sign language (or maybe just grunts and groans like a regular troll) and drawing pictures on caves.

Thank you for your time and patience, and hope to see you soon in your writings – ofcourse, in the right place, for the right purpose!

Punctuationally yours,

(Signed: Apostrophe)