'To those who care about punctuation,' writes Lynne Truss in her bestselling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves , 'a sentence such as “Thank God its Friday” (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence.' The book is heavy on hyperbole and seeks to entertain as well as educate its reader, but it also highlights a growing concern among some people about a perceived decline in standards of written English. Facebook is littered with poorly punctuated comments left by folks who show scant regard for apostrophes, commas and capital letters. How many times have you seen "it's" (with an apostrophe) in place of "its"? It strikes me as odd that lots of people fail to observe this simple rule: Use "it's" when you mean "it is" or "it has". You might shrug your shoulders and say, "Who cares?” before I earnestly protest that if we expect high standards in other forms of public communication, t...
The words of an English language teacher & proofreader