Apostrophes are hella important. They should always be correct. I'm unlikely to go into a café which has a missing/incorrect apostrophe on its sign. Mistakes do happen (been there, still am there sometimes!) but really, you should put in maximum effort.
Apostrophe's are the devils punctuation mark. There are no apostrophe's in the Bible! Go look, I'll wait.
"insensitive prick!" – Danielle Algo
Seeing a lot of bad examples doesn't make it easier if English is not your first language to start with. Then again, many of those examples may be from people for who it's not their first.
We have something similar in Dutch with spaces, where writing words separate that should be combined gives a whole different meaning. Many people make mistakes like that, including those for whom Dutch is their mother tongue. But reading a lot of English, where words are hardly ever combined to one new word, makes it seem more natural to keep them apart in Dutch as well I guess. It gets even more difficult when some words are burrowed from English, which is the case with a lot of new words.
=== Not ALL LIVES MATTER until BLACK LIVES MATTER ===
Apostrophes matter very much, moreso than something like an Oxford comma. I'm fairly careful about them but slip up from time to time, with the infamous "its-it's" being my main poison.
Was thinking about apostrophes as a result of this thread, and why they can be so difficult for so many.
Came up with a bunch of reasons:
-As people's usage gets weaker, there are fewer correct examples to see around as guides.
-There is anxiety associated with them, and adding an apostrophe when you're not sure probably feels like you're "doing something." Sort of a hyper-correction (i.e., error) along the lines of: "between you and I," or "I'll give a present to whomever cleans my garage."
-The plurals of certain names just look funny, so when you're addressing a letter to an entire family whose last name is, for example, "Hannity," writing, "The Hannitys" looks funny, as it contravenes one's general sense of making -y words plural in English. As a result, many write, "The Hannity's," because that seems better than what is more obviously wrong: "The Hannities." I think people assume that apostrophes can make plurals in situations like that, even when the name is simple, e.g., the "Carson's," when it should be the "Carsons."
(I even had an apostrophe added to one of my stories here in such a situation during the verification process. I had written something along the lines of, "...the Maldens live next door..." which got changed to, "the Malden's," before I requested that it be fixed back.)
Yes, apostrophes ought to be used correctly, but I think when we all ought to be gentle when we see mistakes, unless they are both glaring and crucial to understanding, or from people who really ought to know better. As I've gotten older, I've run into more and more people who have their own personal litmus tests for others' literacy. That is, mistakes that each person finds indicative of gross incompetence in English.
Such include:
-thinking that "bemused" is a synonym for "amused."
-"in and of itself"
-"at this point in time."
-not knowing the difference between disinterested / uninterested; continuous / continual; aureole / areola; sensuous / sensual; etc., etc.
-using "hopefully" to mean "I hope that," rather than, "in a hopeful manner."
-and about a gazillion more.
Realistically, very few of us are perfect on all of these, and who knows what invisible tripwires of others we are setting off, so always best, I think, to try to be gentle when you see someone else making a mistake. If it matters, and it's appropriate for you to point it out, do so. But to go looking for trouble? ("Dude, your sign's wrong").
I'm reminded of a classic joke.
"Excuse me, where's the cafeteria at?"
"At Harvard (or Oxford, or lushstories), we don't end our sentences with prepositions."
"Okay, where's the library at, asshole?"
English is not my natural language, which is perhaps why I am so very careful, to the point of near-OCD obsession, with the use of oddities like apostrophes.
The flip side of this acute awareness of proper usage is that misuse of these oddities in stories, on this site or elsewhere, is that nothing brings me to a full stop whilst reading quite like a glaring mistake--for me, the placement of an apostrophe, or comma, or other punctuation mark, where none is needed or in an incorrect manner, will bring my brain to a full stop, making it nigh on impossible to continue with my reading. It is what it is.
So yes, apostrophes matter.
Want to spend some time wallowing in a Recommended Read? Pick one! Or two! Or seven!
i'm a part of the save the apostrophes movement. no seriously - save them. i hate to see them being used willy nilly. i believe people misplace them in an effort not to make grammatical errors.
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I thought Apostrophe was a Greek philosopher...
Now all I need is a spy to let me know the next time she rents a cottage there so I can get one nearby. Sorry Danielle, but I couldn’t resist adding this remark. 
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