*** What follows is a brief essay I wrote for my Teaching Grammar class. The point of the essay was to tell a story that involved a disagreement over the "rules" of the English language. I was to perform a good deal of research on the "rule" I chose, and it was my task to weave that research into my story in a meaningful way. To those who know the story, I would ask that you keep this in mind: I wrote this trying to preserve the impressions of my teenage-mind. My current self wouldn't agree with everything she has to say. ***
Anyone who has ever been a Mormon teenage girl can tell you
about the Young Women program. Designed to function as both a religious class
and an extracurricular club, each local Young Women group consists of twelve-
to eighteen-year-old girls, and is run by a presidency made up of middle-aged
Mormon women. My own experiences in Young Women were highly satisfactory . . .
until the local president and I began to fight about my supposed lack of proper
respect for authority figures. Once she decided that I was an impudent child, I
decided that she was an idiot – a fact that was proven to me when she sent home
a list of supplies that we would need for “Girls Camp” that year.
Girls Camp? Wrong. It should have been “Girls’ Camp.” I took the list to my editing-inclined
mother and asked, “How can I be expected to show respect to someone who can’t even
use an apostrophe?”
“But she
doesn’t need to use an apostrophe there,” Mom responded. Blaspheme. I left
silently: They were obviously in it together.
What I didn’t
know at fifteen was that the apostrophe has ever been an item of confusion for
even the most dedicated scholars. Although apostrophes were used as early as
the 16th century to indicate omissions, there was no attempt to
govern the other types of usage until the mid-19th century (Cavella,
and Kernodle). The basic rules upon which most modern scholars agree dictate
that apostrophes can be used in three ways: possessives, contractions, and
unusual plurals – such as “the aye’s
have it” (Bullock, and Weinberg). I understood this. The phrase was “Girls’
Camp,” I thought, because it was our
camp. It belonged to us.
That precise
assumption is what causes the confusion. Because according to writers Tim North
and Richard Nordquist, the word “girls” in that phrase does not signify ownership;
rather, it is a description – much like “a writers manual” or “a childrens book”
(Nordquist). They would argue that the camp is not owned by girls, it is for girls; therefore, the use of a
possessive apostrophe would be inappropriate, incorrect. And I would be wrong
(North, Nordquist).
Both I and
my Young Women President were following the rules – we were just using
different playbooks. Grammar, like every other aspect of language, reflects the
power structure of the society in which it is made. My president’s insistence
that the apostrophe was unnecessary was a continuation of her insistence that I
– as a minor – had no place in the administration and control of our activities,
while my own determination to scribble the apostrophe in anyway was a physical
manifestation of exactly the impudence she had been accusing me of. I was going
to take ownership of my life, whether the rules permitted it or not. Oddly
enough, the apostrophe was my tool for rebellion.
Incidentally, the LDS church’s stance
on the issue is this: they refer to it as Young Women Camp. Without the apostrophe.
