The one affectation I have forced on the publisher. . . are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.
I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to predictive texting for a - acceptable to some - synonym.
I would say that Catholics came in and competed with the Protestant work ethic. That is one thing. And they did assimilate into the broader society and a lot of them, especially Irish Catholic did their best to sound like they were English rather than Irish by dropping and the O and the apostrophe.
Never underestimate the power of a well-placed apostrophe.
The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe!
Something there is in cyberspace that doesn't love an apostrophe.
