Even Greener Pastures

@Alharacas

Idiot's apostrophe - I love that. I think I'm lucky because my short-term memory is quite poor so I don't tend to unlearn things (this obviously only works in your favour if what you learned in the first place is correct). However, I have experienced moments where I hesitated after almost writing "it's" where there should be "its". This is something I wouldn't have done years ago when I was learning English at school.

@SHL

I know what you mean about words ending with "s". Those words just never look right. I was writing a post about the log Alharacas had started and I wrote "Alharacas' idea" and I was just staring at it because it looked wrong.

In theory, what doesn't have any function in language stops being used but in this case, it's being overused instead. I mean, it does have some function. Without the apostrophe, you wouldn't know if something belongs to one person or a group of people (my sister's clothes vs my sisters' clothes) but it can also cause confusion because it looks like the contracted form of the verb "to be". If you say "John's cold", does it mean "John is cold" or "John's cold (is getting worse)"?