Advent Calendar: December 7th

Reminder to all those who are sending out holiday cards this year to friends and loved ones: heed your motherfucking apostrophes.

I know it's tempting to send a card to the Smith family and write on the envelope "The Smith's" but I'm fucking telling you right now that's wrong. Don't fucking do it!!

The apostrophe is used for two things and two things only. The first is contractions, i.e. the shortening of a word or phrase. Instead of writing "cannot," for instance, you write "can't." Instead of writing "I have," you can write "I've." The phrase "rock 'n' roll" is a stylistic way of shortening "rock and roll," with the apostrophes replacing the A and the D in the word "and." The rock 'n' roll song "Sweet Child o' Mine" uses an apostrophe to replace the F in "of" for some reason. You get it.

The second apostrophe use is for possession. If someone owns something, either literally or figuratively, then you can attach an apostrophe plus an S (or an S plus an apostrophe if it's plural). So if Joe owns an abnormally large penis, you can say "Joe's big dick." If a group of astronauts can't see Joe's tiny penis from space, then you might say there "is very little to see out the astronauts' window." The astronauts don't literally own the window (NASA does, I guess), but they are figuratively in possession of it. We're talking about ownership on any level. There are more rules to this, but you get the point.

ANYTHING ELSE BESIDES THESE TWO SCENARIOS DOES NOT GET AN APOSTROPHE. Never. Not fucking ever. Don't do it. If you are talking about the Johnson family, you write on their goddamn envelope "The Johnsons." NOT "The Johnson's." If you write that, then you must be referring to a singular man named Johnson, using the article "the," and showing that The Johnson owns something. If this is not what you mean, then your writing "The Johnson's" is WRONG.

I don't care how stupid it looks without the apostrophe. It doesn't matter. The rules are the rules. Trust me, you look way more stupid adding an apostrophe incorrectly. Yes, a family with the last name "Johannes" really are the Johanneses. They are NOT "the Johannes's" or "the Johannes'" or whatever the fuck apostrophic butchery you want to commit. There is no possession! There is no contraction! It's just a pluralization! Don't fucking use an apostrophe!

Now if you really are sending an Xmas card to some family with the surname of, like, Lopez or something, and they themselves believe in the apostrophe use in pluralization, like maybe they sent you a card last year signed "The Lopez's" or something, then two things. One, they suck, don't send them a greetings card, they don't deserve. But two, if you really insist, then just save us all the horror and write "The Lopez Family."

If we must, we shall sacrifice pluralization all together if it means we get to preserve the sanctity of the apostrophe.