Are apostrophes actually needed?

Question

I don't mean to make it grammatically correct I mean does English need them?

I can't seem to find a use case other than it's "legacy" in English, but that is never a reason to keep something around.

For example, would there ever be a confusion of "hell" and "he'll"? What about "theyll" or "they'll" or "he's" and "hes".

A friend brought up this use case:

Tim: "How do I get up there?"
Rodney: { "Well think." | "We'll think." }

Except that is even flawed because technically "well" in the first example needs a comma after like:

Rodney: { "Well, think." | "We'll think." }

This would clear this confusion up.

I saw killtheapostrophe.com years ago and it got me thinking and so I brought it up with my grandmother, who has a Ph. D. in linguistics, and she agrees with him, however it got brought up again on Twitter and I was curious what others who love linguistics think about it.

Answer 1

I think the arguments on that site are pretty weak.

For one, the argument that "If you can't think of an example, there mustn't be one" is very poor. A lack of imagination does not constitute a robust argument.

In addition, the writer suggests replacing the pluralising 's' with a 'z', to get over the problem of singular and plural possessives. So, he's asking us to ditch the apostrophe and change pluralisation.

On top of that, the rationale for removing them are spurious at best:

1. Redundant: Hardly makes the case for this, as noted above
2. Costly: The idea that apostrophes makes up a considerable amount of a proof-reader's effort is bogus.
3. Snobbery: Removing the apostrophe will hardly bring about a revolution in attitudes. Snobs don't need tools to be snobs.
4. Text messaging: Citing the mores of txtspk as justification for eradicating a punctuation mark? Let's lose those pesky vowels, too, eh? Hell, Hawaii makes do with just 13 letters (if you include the 'okina (hello apostrophe!))
5. Impeding communication: I can't speak generally to this, but I've never come across a situation where the presence of an apostrophe has made it difficult to understand something. Nor have I struggled to express myself when faced with a potential apostrophe hole
6. Distraction: If the presence of misplaced apostrophes drives you to distraction, you probably have bigger issues to deal with than misplaced apostrophes.

Sure, sure, this is all pretty subjective. However, the very argument for removing apostrophes given on that site is riddled with straw men and subjective viewpoints.

In the absence of compelling reasons to remove the apostrophe, "legacy" becomes a very compelling reason to keep them.

Answer 2

@Dancrumb made a perfectly well-reasoned and appealing (to me) answer. I’ll just give a single example:

The dog’s bark warned them    vs.    The dogs’ bark warned them

So: yes, apostrophes are “needed”.

Answer 3

The majority of punctuation is probably redundant as well but what would you rather read a book with no paragraphs no periods no commas no apostrophes etc or a properly punctuated book heres what it comes down to ease of comprehension yes you could figure out the no punctuation book just fine if you thought about it long enough but it would be a massive headache and require several extra hours to read the same book which leads me to believe that anyone who would advocate discontinuation of punctuation has never had a real job in their entire life if you wrote a technical manual or book intended to be read by computer or electrical engineers and it didnt have punctuation you would be the ridicule of the entire industry or at the very least the office

(There are most probably enough clues within the above text to figure out where the sentences begin and end, where the commas, apostrophes, etc. should go, etc. I trust that you are willing to figure it out!)

Answer 4

No, apostrophes are-nt necessary, but if you do away with them, then in some situations you-re going to have to introduce other punctuation to disambiguate. There-s really no getting around that. I-d say the best bet is the hyphen, which-ll look immediately familiar if you happen to know some Romanian.

Wo-nt, do-nt, would-nt, are-nt, etc. have no real need for punctuation, but it does aid readability and makes the pronunciation more apparent—although [duənt] is-nt the commonest pronunciation of do-nt, so that one could be misleading. The contractions of would, will, are, is, has, and have would take a hyphen as well:

• I-d like that.
• I-ll do it.
• You-re beautiful.
• He-s just this guy, y-know?
• She-s got the plague.
• I could-ve died!

Plurals take no hyphen, and possessives simply add -s regardless of plurality:

• The dog-s bark warned them.
• The dogs-s bark warned them.

This is just one possible example of the kind of shift that would need to take place in order to actually do away with the apostrophe altogether. Really, what would the point of it be?

Answer 5

I can't seem to find a use case other than it's "legacy" in English…

That's ironic, since you have a use case right there within that sentence.

I can't seem to find a use case other than its "legacy" in English…

… would indicate that the legacy belongs to the use case, which is obviously not what you mean. But it would have been quite confusing had you forgotten the apostrophe!