kikipeepers asked
Pikes Peak, named after explorer Zebulon Pike, lost its apostrophe in 1891. That was the year that the newly formed U.S. Board on Geographic Names outlawed this seemingly innocent mark of punctuation: 'The possessive form using an 's' is allowed,' declared the Board, 'but the apostrophe is almost always removed.' Some would be quite happy to broaden the ban on that 'morbid growth in English orthography,' as linguist Steven Byington characterized the mark. Writing in American Speech in 1945, he observed that 'the language would be none the worse for its abolition.' More recently, in an article bluntly titled 'Axing the Apostrophe,' Adrian Room argues that apostrophes are simply unnecessary. So what, he says, if “we’ll” appears as “well” or “he’ll” as “hell.” Context, he insists, 'should soon show which word is meant, and grammatical parameters would make ambiguity unlikely' Another knowledgeable opponent of apostrophes is English teacher Peter Brodie, who also advocates abolition: 'they are largely decorative, like the French circumflex, and--unlike the comma--rarely clarify meaning' According to my extremely unscientific Google poll, two very different groups are behind the campaign to abolish the apostrophe...
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