Apostrophe Apostle: The Girl's Like Spaghetti by Lynn Truss

Problems with when and where to use the apostrophe? As Lynne Truss says,

Don't blame the apostrophe. Blame the people who didn't come up with different marks for the different jobs.

Especially when it comes to the word its.

Whoever those historical grammarians were, they're probably hiding in the witness protection program by now. The misuse of it's has, for some reason, become ever more annoyingly flagrant in recent years.

Yet, in a way it's a natural and understandable error. There are two accepted usages of the "flying comma:" 1) to take the place of the missing letter in a contraction (I'm for I am) and 2) to indicate possession before a noun (John's book). The train wreck for the grammar-challenged comes in the use of the apostrophe with the word it. Faced with the confusion of using the apostrophe with it for both permitted usages, grammarians came down on the side of using the apostrophe to indicate the contraction and never ever using it to show possession. This rule seems straightforward and not that hard to fix in the mind. (IT'S MEANS IT IS. ALWAYS. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.) For some reason, this rule served us well until, well, fairly recently, when the whole grammar train went off the tracks at Junction IT.

Now, mind you, historians of the language might muddy the water a bit. I recall my freshman English professor pointing out that the 's usage to indicate possession actually came from a shortening of the earlier English usage "John, his book" to indicate possession, which gradually contracted into John's book in the interest of brevity. (If you say "John, his book" fast three times, this explanation seems believable.) If this bit of linguistic history is true, then the possessive use of the apostrophe is, er, actually a contractive use of the apostrophe, and so..., um, I guess by logic it's (meaning that belonging to IT) should be correct as well--unless you consider it the neuter pronoun--in which case you can't use the 's because none of the other pronouns are allowed to form the possessive that way! Yikes!

I don't blame author Lynne Truss for not going there. Things are bad enough as they are. Instead, she devotes her latest book to humorous lessons in the use of the apostrophe.

The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage without Apostrophes! uses a kid-friendly format which features large cartoons on facing pages showing the meaning of two phrases or sentences made ambiguous by the misuse or misunderstanding of the apostrophe. One pair of cartoons shows two phrases, "The giant kid's playground" (with the cartoon picturing a giant kid enjoying his very own play place) and "The giant kids' playground (with a bunch of regular kids enjoying a giant place to play). Another double page spread pairs "The dogs like my dad" (with a bunch of dogs doting on Dad) with "The dog's like my dad" (which shows a red-haired dad and his look-alike shaggy red pooch taking a stroll together).

One cute kid pleaser couples "Look! It's behind!" (with kids pointing to a turtle who is finishing the race in last place) and "Look! Its behind!" (with kids pointing to a horse's prominent rear end.) Then there's the sister-friendly pair "Those smelly things are my brother's" (with a girl pointing to her male sibling's stinky sneakers) and "Those smelly things are my brothers!" (with the same girl pointing to her two odoriferous male siblings. An appendix features thumbnails of each cartoon and an explanation of what its caption really means in case the reader is still confused.

Let us hope that The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why You Can't Manage without Apostrophes! enjoys as much success as its predecessor, the children's version of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why Commas Really Do Make a Difference! It's hoped by grammarians that its humorous lessons will be well learned by its readers.