I don't particularly think that apostrophes should be destroyed, but I do think they aren't absolutely necessary. I agree with Damon Knight that very little confusion would be created by removing apostrophes completely from the English language.

I checked for anything authoritarian on the question and found this website:

http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm

with the following information:

quote:

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Plurals and Apostrophes
We use an apostrophe to create plural forms in two limited situations: for pluralized letters of the alphabet and when we are trying to create the plural form of a word that refers to the word itself. Here we also should italicize this "word as word," but not the 's ending that belongs to it. Do not use the apostrophe+s to create the plural of acronyms (pronounceable abbreviations such as laser and IRA and URL*) and other abbreviations. (A possible exception to this last rule is an acronym that ends in "S": "We filed four NOS's in that folder.")

Jeffrey got four A's on his last report card.

Towanda learned very quickly to mind her p's and q's.

You have fifteen and's in that last paragraph.

Notice that we do not use an apostrophe -s to create the plural of a word-in-itself. For instance, we would refer to the "ins and outs" of a mystery, the "yeses and nos" of a vote (NYPL Writer's Guide to Style and Usage), and we assume that Theodore Bernstein knew what he was talking about in his book Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage. We would also write "The shortstop made two spectacular outs in that inning." But when we refer to a word-as-a-word, we first italicize it — I pointed out the use of the word out in that sentence. — and if necessary, we pluralize it by adding the unitalicized apostrophe -s — "In his essay on prepositions, Jose used an astonishing three dozen out's." This practice is not universally followed, and in newspapers, you would find our example sentence written without italics or apostrophe: "You have fifteen ands in that last paragraph."

Some abbreviations have embedded plural forms, and there are often inconsistencies in creating the plurals of these words. The speed of an internal combustion engine is measured in "revolutions per minute" or rpm (lower case) and the efficiency of an automobile is reported in "miles per gallon" or mpg (no "-s" endings). On the other hand, baseball players love to accumulate "runs batted in," a statistic that is usually reported as RBIs (although it would not be terribly unusual to hear that someone got 100 RBI last year — and some baseball commentators will talk about "ribbies," too). Also, the U.S. military provides "meals ready to eat" and those rations are usually described as MREs (not MRE). When an abbreviation can be used to refer to a singular thing — a run batted in, a meal ready-to-eat, a prisoner of war — it's surely a good idea to form the plural by adding "s" to the abbreviation: RBIs, MREs, POWs. (Notice that no apostrophe is involved in the formation of these plurals. Whether abbreviations like these are formed with upper- or lower-case letters is a matter of great mystery; only your dictionary editor knows for sure.)

Notice, furthermore, that we do not use an apostrophe to create plurals in the following:

The 1890s in Europe are widely regarded as years of social decadence.

I have prepared 1099s for the entire staff.

Rosa and her brother have identical IQs, and they both have PhDs from Harvard.

She has over 400 URLs* in her bookmark file.

Authority for this last paragraph: Keys for Writers: A Brief Handbook by Ann Raimes. Houghton Mifflin: New York. 1996.

*The jury still seems to be out on whether URL (acronym for Uniform [or Universal] Resource Locator), the address of a Website on the World Wide Web, should be pronounced like the name of your Uncle Earl or as a series of letters: U*R*L. The information technology experts at the college where I work use the "earl" pronunciation, and one would have to ask why you'd want to say "you-are-ell" when a simple "earl" would suffice. In either case, though, the plural of URL would be spelled URLs. The New York Times, by the way, would insist on U.R.L.'s because their style guide requires that everything be capitalized in headlines and URLS would look dumb in a headline. So use URLs unless you're writing for the New York Times.

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I submit that in the above examples of using apostrophes to create plurals the plurals would make sense without the apostrophes.

On apostrophes:

Source for my comments in Prowder's thread: Webster's New World Dictionary (1995). Though Webster's II New Riverside Desk Dictionary (1988) gives the plural with no apostrophe. My VERY OLD (1924 or so)unabridged dictionary (The title page and cover are missing so I can't give the title) also gives the plural without apostrophe. <shrug>

It's just that I stumbled over the word for just a moment, wondering if it was a typo, then thought on it for enough moments more to reach for the nearest available dictionary, which gave the plural with the apostrophe.

I quite agree, Kathleen, that the apostrophe can be largely done away with--except in instances in which it improves clarity.

IE. "The dogs feed," and "The dog's feed." Two fragment sentences, of course. But since fragments often appear in dialogue and often appear in fictional narrative, the apostrophe helps with clarity.

So, for me, the apostrophe clarifies that Prowder firmly intends for the word to be plural, and didn't just misspell. No doubts. No questions. Clear. I suppose the difficulty comes with the fact that the word ends in s. Sheep, not ending in s, and being a much more commonly used word than chassis, is a word that we know to be both the singular and plural form, therefore we automatically look to context to decide whether it is being used singularly or plurally. If there are ANY other words in the languag that have the same form for both plural and singular AND end in s, I'd like to hear about them, and hear exactly how one would clarify them as singular or plural--besides mere usage, as usage can often be confused.

I like possesive apostrophes. They create greater precision with minimal awkwardness.

The dogs feed
and
The dog's feed

are differentiated quite eloquently by that little apostrophe.

Let's not yet vote the apostrophe off the island.

All apostrophes have been removed from place names too. For instance I work on the Queens Domain, which in the 1960s was called the Queen's Domain.

Actually, to save on the wear and tear of my wrists, let's just get rid of all the letters that aren't in the "home rome" of the keyboard.

i can't think of any examples except for romanized chinese right off the top of my head tho, the "X" in those is pronounced as more of a "J" with a very slight "Z" mixed into the "J"... a very interesting sound i might add

"Ps and Qs," depending on the story, stands for "Pints and Quarts" or "Ps" and "Qs" (letters being set by a typesetter) or "Pleases and ThankQues."

One commonality among the varying versions of the phrase's etymology is that the words are plurals, not possessives.

Except that using an apostrophe for the plurals of individual letters is legitimate, and helps avoid confusion.

It is actually how I recall that "its" has no apostrophe. I think of it being a genitive case pronoun, analogous to "his" and "hers".

But I find not using contractions rather unnatural. I almost put two in this post.

The only really good reason I can think of to get rid of apostrophes is because they are hard to input using graffiti on a PDA. I always wind up with a "-". I think "-ough" is much higher on my list of things that English could do without.

quote:

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Except that using an apostrophe for the plurals of individual letters is legitimate, and helps avoid confusion.

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On the contrary. That is exactly what is creating confusion, because nobody seems to know when it's accepted and when it's not. If we all followed that apostrophes were only used for contractions and possession, then things would be simpler.

Just because some people are confused doesn't mean all people are.

People misuse commas all the time. Does that mean we should abandon the comma? Of course not. It just means we need to do a better job of letting people know about the rules.

Color vs Colour
Labor vs Labour
Check vs Cheque

etcetera.

(And whay does Microsoft refer to it as international english? Arrogant vs arrogant, Oh hang on! Arrogant is the same in anyone's language)

Maybe we should just teach you guys the rules.

But then again, the biggest market wins. Right?

(Please recognise that this is a long string of tongue-in-cheek.)

BTW: There are cultural ramifications or permutations to this debate. Please don't pinch my apostrophe off the key board; I won't be able to write emails to my friend Mr Tuiali'i.