Afternoon Reading List 05.23.13

A piece by Slates Matthew J.X. Malady raises an interesting question: what if apostrophes werent actually necessary? Only in use to signify omitted letters since the 16th century and in possessives since the 17th, apostrophes history may be beginning to draw to a close. The story cites multiple writers and scholars who have abandoned the punctuation mark, which Malady calls  an “uncouth bacilli,” and the language used by bloggers and new media, which largely omits apostrophes.