Simon Horobin, an English professor at Magdalen College, Oxford, asked the audience at the Telegraph Hay Festival: Do we really need the apostrophe?
He added that "sometimes we have to accept spellings change".
This was always likely to make pedants everywhere livid.
Burn him! MT “@sarahknapton: Prof Simon Horobin at Hay Festival asks “Is the apostrophe so crucial to the preservation of our society?”
Andrew Trotman
@TeleTrotman
Burn him! MT “@sarahknapton: Prof Simon Horobin at Hay Festival asks “Is the apostrophe so crucial to the preservation of our society?â€
And sure enough, grammar Nazis were immediately out in force.
Its [sic] depressing to hear this from an Oxford professor via @Telegraph http://t.co/op6nhtVD03
Tim Walker
@ThatTimWalker
Its [sic] depressing to hear this from an Oxford professor via @Telegraph http://t.co/op6nhtVD03
This Oxford academic, Simon Horobin, clearly doesn't like standards. Or efficiency. #foreverpedantic
T Portilho-Shrimpton
@Selkie
This Oxford academic, Simon Horobin, clearly doesn't like standards. Or efficiency. #foreverpedantic
1. You know what? They're right. Grammar is important. Forgetting a simple apostrophe can lead to this.
2. And this.
3. And (shudder) all these.
4.
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6. It's important to get your commas right, too.
7.
8.
9.
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11.
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15. And don't just add quotation marks because you feel like it, you just sound sarcastic.
16.
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18. And don't even get me started on overusing exclamation marks.
19. This article sums it up nicely.
20. So remember, be careful with your grammar. It really does a difference.
