The only time apostrophes are used is to denote possesion or contraction.
There's an electronics shop on granville street in vancouver that has neon signs that advertise "CD's", "DVD's", "Stereo's", "Radio's".
Walking by I felt like smashing the window.
CDs
DVDs
UFAs
FAs
1960s
'60s - Notice how this makes it much more noticably correct. "...'90's..." looks ######ed.
Radios
Stereos
When speaking of people - "There are only so many Trudeaus in a nation...".
Possessive form of words ending in "s" - "The Flames' defence looks solid this season". Too often you'll see a token apostrophe tossed in "The Flame's defence...".
Definitely my pet peeve in writing. Some syntactical things, some obscure grammar...who cares. But the apostrophe thing is so easy, it's amazing so many people f*** it up.
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"For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable." - Carl Sagan
Freedom consonant with responsibility.
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