More Incompetence with Apostrophes

My friend Mark LaFlaur, a free-lance editor in New York City, is also disgusted with the lack of understanding about when to use apostrophes. He and his wife recently spotted an ad poster for cable or cell phone service on the Long Island Railroad that read:

OPTIMUM?
ABSOLUTELY!

Beneath the headline, an apparently disgruntled customer had scrawled:

STINK'S

Again, as this blog has pointed out numerous times, it is NOT necessary to put an apostrophe before the S in a simple verb. Even a graffiti artist ought to have known it should be written STINKS.

Mark e-mailed a friend and commented that the new "rule" on this subject seems to be that, with any word ending in S, whether it's a noun, verb, or other part of speech, insert an apostrophe before the S in order to play it safe. You can't go wrong!

But the truth is, if you use that rule, you do indeed go wrong and create a Grammar Glitch that highlights your ignorance.

Mark's friend responded by commenting that "Today, huge numbers of people think that the possessive of IT is IT'S. (See yesterday's Fox News blog entry.) English language competence in the U. S. has taken another wrong turn, with some people now thinking that the way to make a plural of a noun is to add 'S. He backed up his point with two example sentences from a recent Huffington Post blog entry:

Agents are not career coach's.

Follow in the foot-step's of Tom Brokaw.

NOTE: When I checked the Huffington Post blog site, these two goofs had been corrected. They now read correctly as follows:

Agents are not career coaches.

Follow in the footsteps of Tom Brokaw.

Stay tuned. Mark LaFlaur is an excellent editor, and he has shared some other good examples of "Incorrect (or Questionable) Usage in Print." I will share more of them in coming days.