I’m having an apostrophe—

 Not an epiphany. (Allusion alert: whatcha say, new Uncle Scribe?  You got it?  Of course you do.)  I mean just what I said, and I am going to give a little lesson right here and now on what the little apostrophe does, running in the background, to make our lives (I almost wrote “livers”) better.  Oyey, oyey (meaing “hear, hear” if I spelled it right): the apostrophy does two jobs.

1) It tells you when something belongs to somebody.  As in Kristen’s blog.  Ginna’s brilliant images.  Ginger’s pure heart.  Megs’ twins.  Also as in “the dog’s bowl” (which means the bowl belongs to the dog), or “the dogs’ bowl” (meaning that the bowl belongs to many dogs, clouds of dogs, thousands of dogs).  You can tell if it’s one dog or more than one by reading how much of the word shows up in FRONT of the apostrophe: dog ‘ s  vs dogs ‘.  AND

2) the apostrophe is a  stand-in for letters you wantonly disregard when you are speaking English.  As in “Wouldn’t you like some Trader Joe’s chocolate?”  You wouldn’t say, “Would not you like some?”  Because if you did, people would look at you oddly and you would be considered an elitist or at least an anachronism.  So you dump the “o” in “not” and slap the remaining consonants on the end of “would” (which is called the modality indicator, which is another lesson altogether), and stick the apostrophe in where the “o” used to be in “not.”  Clear?  Uh-huh.

Some people carry around an apostrophe inside, like people who say, jewdo’t?  Or youdun’t?  But I would never commit those things to writing for obvious reasons.  Won’t, can’t, shouldn’t – wait.  “Won’t” actually is “will not.”  But saying willn’t takes too much attention to detail in the speakin’ of it, so we really change that one.  Shan’t also means willn’t, which is weird.  No, it means shall not.  And that’s another lesson, too, the difference between will and shall.

I suppose, also, that some words, like the new version of the word “mountain,” which comes from the French and always had a definite “t” in the middle (and which is significant of an actual, living dynamic consonant shift – I think the last one happened in the fifteen hundreds – oh what marvelous times we live in – almost like looking up in the sky and seeing Haley’s comet) could now be accurately written “mou’a’n” with the apostrophes not only sitting in for several rejected letters, but for a couple of glottal stops as well.

Are you fascinated yet?  Am I speaking in English?  What with the sleep-aids and the decongestants I can’t be certain . . .