Netiquette drawing out my inner grammar/punctuation snob

First off, I am generally a descriptivist in virtually all walks of life, but particularly so when it comes to linguistics. I find that the function of grammar is communication and if a point has been communicated, then the construction wasn't "wrong" - perhaps non-standard or non-academic, but again all language is very contextual. I have a little less tolerance for hypercorrection - when people alter their speech to what sounds "more formal" but which is grammatically "incorrect" (e.g.: "Whom ordered the turkey sandwich") - I suppose, part of this is that it smacks of pretension but also it tends to just not sound right to my native ear. Also, considering the oddly complex sentence structures that strike my fancy, well ... stones and glass houses etc. etc.

I guess punctuation usually is the textual substitute grammar and intonation. We speak with more than our literal words, and the arrangement of these words requires some instruction to be read back in our heads (sotto vocce, andante! Smiley face!!!). When these signals are lacking or errant, we may perhaps confuse verbs for nouns and other confusing atrocities. Hence the idea of "crash blossoms" - a consequence of the distance between spoken and written language and our general tendency to "sound" things out when we read. Usually the best crash blossoms occur due to poor word placement, but punctuation can also contribute.

But - as always - I digress. I've noticed an increasing amount of errant apostrophe's (HA!) recently. Now, I tend to be pretty forgiving of these sorts of errors. More often than not, I think that it's a brain-finger disconnect along the lines of your average typo. When I go to write its - knowing full well that I intend the possessive of it, and that this form of it takes no apostrophe due to the consternations of what we may call the English language - my fingers will succumb to habitual apostrophe without running it past my brain whatsoever. And the rules for the apostrophe are arbitrary and capricious: is it -s's or -s' or -seseseses'??? who knows! But let's agree: ordinarily when the eyes do their right-to-left scanning, an apostrophe draws them in. If it's clearly a context where the possessive is appropriate: no problem. If it's clearly a place where a verb should be and the s soothes my inner sense of action: equally no problem.I'm a little warier when the apostrophe comes rolling in strictly for pluralization purposes... of course there are times where this is handy, but it's just one more complication waiting to be egregiously misused to baffle my reading speed. And yes I will get to that in a minute.

Incidentally, I tend to think the its/it's distinction should be discarded all together. While it takes less time to simply write its, people seem hellbent on always writing it's, regardless. Which is a waste of energy and often misplaced. I've seen errant it's popping up not only in adverts, but in AP articles, renowned magazines... it's time to give up the battle, and I vote for less punctuation over more.

But to get back to that odd duck of apostrophe pluralization, there is a facebook friend of mine (of course!) who is posting a little more frequently than I would prefer. My main complaint is that these posts are intensely redundant and each post is reposted word-for-word from her business profile, her personal profile, and her second-in-command's profile. This is in addition to about four weekly invitations to business related events she knows full well I cannot attend... while I support actually networking through social networks (satisfying the that-for-the-sake-of-which in purely Aristotelian orgasmics!), it does incline me to be a bit ornery in a "hey you kids, get off my wall!" kind of way. And thus: there is some hubbub about new logos shaking the triplicate statuses. (Not as in the greek logos and in the beginning there was logos and the logos was bios, etc., but those pretty little pictures that businesses use). It's a common topic of the multi-post-monster. And each time she writes "logo's" - NOT in reference to the possessive but to indicate multiple logos. I know, it's NOT a possessive, but everytime I read it, my brain crash blossoms dramatically. She also maintains a photo album titled, LOGO IDEA'S. Idea's what??? AAAAAAAAAH.




The official brochure for the NW Chocolate Festival
I forgive them because they gave me chocolate



I think perhaps she throws in the apostrophe it just to draw attention, and sadly it works in my case. Apparently we learn better when we read things written in difficult fonts. The brain is set to take familiar and easy constructions for granted, but when something isn't as it should be - we perk up. Kind of a survival mechanism for that familiar bush over there having a tiger in it that morning (do tigers hang out in trees?). I think nonstandard speech can have an extra oomph due to that second of dissonance - my theory for why "wicked awesome" came to be a phrase. Anything that more or less conveys the appropriate meaning but sounds just a little "off" is striking. And when it's striking in a way that also connotes a sociolinguistic membership of some sort... well it's even more striking.