A WORD, PLEASE:Setting things straight about the apostrophe

This week’s column was going to be about the “campaign to abolish the apostrophe.” I decided on the topic last week while surfing the net for grammar- and punctuation-related news. That’s when I came across an About.com article titled “The Campaign to Abolish the Apostrophe” (see how cleverly I finessed this into an original and unique column topic?).

I filed the article under “R” for “read after my nap” and, four days later, finally opened it up.

But now that I’ve finally read the thing, I realize that it would be better to write a column warning readers about some of the rotten tricks we writers pull — namely, our tendency to create mountains out of molehills. (In the biz, we call it getting an “angle” on a story. Come judgment day, it’ll be called something else.) Often, this involves taking some old news and packaging it as a new phenomenon.

For example, take a century-old decision to remove the apostrophe from “Pikes Peak,” combine that with three articles written in 1945, 1989 and 1995 and — voila! You’ve got yourself a “campaign” worthy of the title “breaking news.”

Yup, that’s all the About.com article was based on. But, heck, it got me to read it. And considering my rigorous napping schedule, that’s quite a feat.

So I’m here to tell you that the campaign to abolish the apostrophe will not be televised because there is no campaign. Yes, the apostrophe is growing less popular, which is why a lot of major newspapers use “teachers union” instead of “teachers’ union.”

But if you think this foreshadows a violent clash between opposing factions of jackbooted nerds, well, don’t hold your breath.

Now, since we know that the apostrophe will be around for at least a few more weeks, it makes sense to do a brief refresher on some of the trickier points of the apostrophe.

I’ll start with my favorite, which I’ve reported here before but not lately.

It’s called the “shared possessive” and it answers the widely wondered-about- but-seldom-asked question: Is it “Bob and Mike’s parents” or “Bob’s and Mike’s parents”? That is, does each person get his own apostrophe and “s,” or can they just share one?

The answer is: It depends on whether you’re talking about something jointly owned or something individually owned.

For example, “Bob and Mike’s parents” is correct if and only if Bob and Mike are brothers. If they’re friends, you must write “Bob’s and Mike’s parents.”

So if possession is shared, the possessive — that is the apostrophe and “s” — are also shared.

Since Brad and Jen’s divorce, it’s Brad’s and Jen’s houses. The divorce is both of theirs. That’s why the houses aren’t.

Here are some other scenarios in which the apostrophe can be so confusing that you might want to start a campaign against it: dealing with initializations and with letters as letters.

That is, when speaking of multiple non-governmental organizations as NGOs, or telling someone to “mind your p’s and q’s.”

Despite a popular misperception that apostrophes never form plurals — i.e., p’s and q’s — there are instances in which guidebooks allow it. Mostly those exceptions apply when the apostrophe is crucial to avoiding confusion.

Without the apostrophe in “p’s and q’s,” it looks like you should mind your “pee ess” and your “kew ess.” But because NGO is capitalized, the NGOs doesn’t pose the same problem.

How can you be sure when one of these apostrophes is “right”?

You can’t. All must rely on your common sense and a trustworthy source, like the “Chicago Manual of Style,” which gives a lot of specific, reliable guidance — unlike certain news outlets.