Recently I’ve started reading a number of business blogs — the sort that make money from their expertise, and rely on a reputation for being a source of information about their industries. The kind that are, by and large, written by professionals.

So why am I seeing so much apostrophe abuse?

Apostrophes have two purposes in life: to show possession (the cat’s whiskers), or to show that there are missing letters in a contraction (can’t). Apostrophes never show pluralism.

Really, no, I promise.

The plural of CD is CDs. The plural of radio is radios. The plural of story is stories. The plural of cat is cats. The plural of sheep is sheep…. OK, I just threw that last one in there to confuse you.

There is one exception to the rule of possession, and that’s the it’s/its rule, which confuses everyone. I always have to ask myself: it is or it owns? If the answer is “it is” then you get an apostrophe, it’s. But when it owns something, then the apostrophe is left out. That’s actually one less correct apostrophe in the world!

I think a lot of the confusion comes from a few misconceptions:

1. Pluralizing acronyms does not require an apostrophe. The acronym already implies the missing letters, so all you need to do is tack an “s” on the end. If you find that too confusing, spell out the acronym (i.e. televisions, not teevees).
2. The abbreviation for the years between 1980 and 1989 is ’80s. The apostrophe is there to show the missing “19”, not to show pluralism. How do I know this? Because apostrophes never show pluralism.
3. Everyone knows there are sometimes special rules for pluralizing words that end in vowels (or are imported from other languages, like Latin), but they can’t always remember what those rules are. So datum becomes data. Dice is already plural, and the singular is die (cheerful, huh?). Company becomes companies. One potato, many potatoes. But you should notice one thing that all of these exceptions have in common: no apostrophes.

You might be wondering, so what? Well, look at this way: a professional writer whose blog is full of errors casts doubt on both their expertise in the craft of writing, but on their expertise the subjects about which they’re writing as well. It’s hard to sound authoritative when you can’t spell “potatoes” — just look at Dan Quayle.

If you still need help remembering, may I suggest Bob the Angry Flower’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots?