Why are more and more people mixing up their possessives and plurals?

CNN does it as well. It’s no longer cool to be smart; ignorance is in.

Just to get on your nerve’s.

And plus also, me and my friend also wonder why no one told she and I how to do it any different.

Because nobody really cares.

I think it’s contagious. I’ve stopped picking up on it because it’s everywhere these days.

@MacBean…rage…building…

me?

Maybe your just being a grammar Nazi?

:-P

Most likely you’ve just started noticing it. There is probably no rise.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard omg that was hilarious. I love it

@Violet ;-)

There is a rise, as far as I can tell. Nobody really wants to pay copy editors anymore.

The Chicago Manual of Style of 2003 featured this error:

“In the hundred and forty years since Antietam, the technologies of depiction have advanced to the point where our experience of a comparable horror—the more than three thousand murders that took place at the southern tip of Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania on the morning of September 11, 2001—are infinitely, and inescapably, more immediate.”

Laff.

I understand when news sources occasionally get things wrong. I don’t like it, because it’s not professional, but I understand. The Chicago Manual of Style, on the other hand, isn’t supposed to make mistakes like that.

Edit: Mistake wasn’t on the back cover.

I had this discussion with a grammar teacher – not specific to the states, but he did mention to look out for small changes – apparently said changes are more appealing to the mass market.

the young generation’s spelling has deteriorated and grammar is not really taught much after grade school. Spellcheck probably has an issue not catching that error as much?

@Nullo Your right! I’m glad I’m not the only one whos been done did notice it.

Spelling and grammar have been tossed out the window.

It’s downright Ludacris.

:D

Whose caring about these things anymore?

idk what wood kos ths.

Ignorance, apathy and a general disinterest in proper grammar. I despaired long ago.

@Trillian Me too

They’re live’s dont depend on weather or not they use approximate appropriate words.

Bothers me too. Looking back at what I just wrote pains me.

One theory locates the shift to the Reagan era, citing the War on Drugs, which imposed harsh penalties for possession. This made citizens much less likely to use possessives, or more likely to disguise them as plurals when they were used, a terrible strategy, considering multiple offenses were punished punctually as well. To add to the confusion, a rebellious popular culture responded to the fear by glorifying the idea of possession—over-using it, even in situations that weren’t possessive (like plurals), to disguise the situation where actual possession was involved. It changed the culture and, sadly, has outlived Reagan.

Or maybe that’s apocryphal…(apostrophal?)

It’s those damn homosexsheels.~

~Theirs no telling why they do these things. Maybe its an evolution that started when we as a culture first started listening to our radio’s. We decided (collectively) that a words spelling didn’t matter as long as it could be understood by the mass’s. And since some possessive’s and some plural’s sound just like the other’s, whats the different’s?

@tinyfaery: I’m reminded of the Shit Gays Didn’t Do project. XD

There has always been confusion about the apostrophe, for as long as it has been in English.

”...it appears from the evidence that there was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear-cut and known, understood, and followed by most educated people.”

- The Oxford Companion to the English Language, in the entry for “apostrophe”