In Memoriam of the Apostrophe

Are You Killing the Apostrophe?
Apostrophe, we hardly knew ye. And now, with the warning coming from this above article, it seems like without even really knowing you, your curvature, the way your smile twinkled at the ends of words in just the right way, and how you secretly told me in the slightest whisper "I'm showing possession of an object", we're throwing you to antiquity, into the drawer reserved for dusty obsoletisms, never to be opened again. We're declaring you, Apostrophe, useless, complicated, and coming with too much linguistic baggage.

I for one will miss you. For a time, you made things to clear, so precise. I could look out and distinguish between singular objects and plural ones. It was easy. Now, there's apparently men who own Limo companies and think there name is Als. Very strange indeed.

It wasn't all too long ago that a small town in rural England - the Queen's country; not the Queens country - decided to axe apostrophes from street signs, road signs, establishment placards, and anything else with the Queen's language scrawled on it. I believe it was Birmingham. The argument used was mostly a pacifist one. It's easier for people to follow. Too many people get confused and don't recognize it. Apostrophes are "confusing and old fashioned." Damn right, they are! So is beer! And walking! I personally think speaking in complete and coherent sentences is for the dullards. Let's put all these anachronisms rest, shall we? I wasn't aware we were getting so fucking postmodern in our road signs.

"Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," Mullaney said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it."

Yes. It's far too difficult. I agree. Never mind the fact that it's simply a matter of people no longer knowing how to construct a sentence that means what they want it to mean, thus have even more of a troubled time trying to interpret one.

But the best argument, GPS has a hard time recognizing the apostrophe. That settles it then, doesn't it? We are officially genuflecting at the alter of the Church of High Technology. 

They are not, as their opponents (multiple, see?) slander them,  merely decorative. They denote certain things to a reader whom certainly doesn't need an A-level education. All they need is a little common sense. There's a big different between won't and wont or hell and he'll. He'll take you down is a different statement than the slang-sounding hell take you down. Pete's Coffee is different than Petes Coffee. If these things all equated to the same thing, then yes, no longer would we need those blasted floating curves of text. But they don't and we do, for clarity's sake. Or maybe what we need is a better education teaching people the basics of how the English language functions. Otherwise, why don't we just all take up Latin and become the Roman Empire we're already well on our way to becoming? It's much less confusing, and we've definitely got our fair share of Caligulas out there.