'S

At odds in my mind are the facts that I am a stickler for correct grammar, yet also painfully aware of how language is an organic entity, constantly changing, and thus cannot be subject to fixed rules governing its use. If a language wants to change, it will. (Unless you are a member of the Academie francaise.)

And so today I couldn't decide whether or not to cry when I read the following YouTube comment beneath Radiohead's smash hit music video for Karma Police:

"This Band Rule's."

Now, I am sure many of you are aware of the interesting place the apostrophe occupies in American grammatical structures. It is used to connote a noun's possession of something - never a pluralization - with the notable exception of "it's" and "its" where the former is short for "it is" and the latter denotes possession. Many people have, with increasing regularity - especially on dry-erase grocery store signs advertising deals on fresh produce - used the apostrophe to pluralize words. Mango's (or even better, Mangoe's), for example. Orange's. Apple's. You get the point. I feel I began to notice this trend some time around the mid-1990s, and it seems to have progressed so far as to be considered an acceptable form of pluralization. Practically, it doesn't make much sense since the trend in languages, especially English, is the lessen the amount of unnecessary letters, whereas here one has actually been added.

As I said before, English is full of such trends. "They" is a great example - previously only meaning two or more people (They all went to the park), it now stands as a substitute word for the cumbersome phrase "he or she." (Likewise "them" for "him or her.")

But this YouTuber's comment left me completely dumbfounded. "This Band Rule's." That's sentence is so ridiculous that it can't even be considered wrong in any normal sense of the word. The author didn't break any real grammar rules, since "Rule" here is not a noun that is being pluralized or possessing something - it's a verb. A conjugated verb, third person present tense. Yet there it is, smack dab center on the YouTube page, chock full of no less than three capital letters, indicating that the author was clearly paying attention to the keyboard.

So do I bemoan the fate of English or get on this new bandwagon before it gets too crowded. I'm not sure. But I do know Radiohead's lead singer: They Rock's.