Death to the apostrophe

I've had it. Here's a headline from a local newspaper: "Favre throw's two TD's, get's first win as a Jet." There are three uses of the apostrophe in this short sentence. One is not really necessary (TD's) and the other two are flat wrong. And I have discussed earlier the use of an apostrophe to indicate the plural.
So, rather than fulminate further, I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to call for the complete abolition of the apostrophe. Let's get rid of them all.
After all, what service does the apostrophe give? Does it differentiate between clauses, as the comma does? Or call things into question? Or terminate things? None of the above. All the apostrophe does is to indicate that a letter is missing. Can't is can not, that sort of thing. Notice that we say can't all the time, you never hear the apostrophe and somehow we get along just fine (there are speaking analogs to periods, commas, exclamation marks, and question marks). So, speech doesn't need an apostrophe at all. Why, then, should we need them in writing?
So, what are apostrophes supposed to do? They give us contractions and possessives. That's about it. What would happen if we didn't use them at all? Would a sentence like "I judge a mans intentions by his actions" be unintelligible or even unclear? Once we have gotten past our apostrophe dependence, the sentence is quite clear. Or, how about, "The boys restroom is down the hall." Any clarity problems? Nope.
The apostrophe is not a significant differentiator. A question mark clearly indicates a question. A capital clearly indicates a sentence is starting. But an apostrophe doesn't really work much. It's just along for the ride.
In fact, the apostrophe is clearly at the root of one of the dilemmas of modern time: Do I write its or it's? So, off with their head's.

A lesson in phonology

Phonology is the linguistic study of sound, as opposed to phonetics, which is a hokey way of trying to get people to read.
English has a lot of problematic words, such as words that end in -ence or -ance, and words like effect/affect. The problem stems from a curious phonological fact in English. It's this: unaccented vowels all assume the same sound. That sound is called schwa, and is represented by an upside-down lowercase e. The sound produced is uh, and is the most prevalent sound in English. So, my name, Ronald, is pronounced ron-uh-ld. Try it, but don't use careful speech. Say a word as you normally would (the as thuh rather than thee).
The result is that words like effect and affect are pronounced the same: uh-ffect. This make it hard to distinguish them when we right them down. The problem with effect/affect is compounded by some additional uses of the two words. Affect is usually a verb (How will this affect us?). However, there is a word affect that is a noun, and refers to the emotional side of things (There was no affect in his voice; it was toneless). And, to make things even more scary, while effect is usually a noun (What effect will this have?) It can also be used as a verb (We need to effect a change.)
So what we have is one word that's a verb, mostly, and one word that's a noun, mostly, and both (or all four) sound alike. No wonder spellers have trouble.

lie/lay and sit/set

Okay, quick now, do you say, "Yesterday I lay in bed all day," or do you say, "Yesterday I laid in bed all day"? How about, "I know I set the clock on the table," as opposed to, "I know I sat the clock on the table"?

These two little gems have been giving people fits for years. The rule goes something like this: If you place something, you lay it or set it (past tense, laid and set). If you place yourself, you lie or sit (past tense lay and sat). I think I've got it right. The present tense of lay is the same as the past tense of lie.

The difference in usage seems to be that lay/set have direct objects (clock) whereas lie/sit don't. One doesn't sit anything. One just sits (or lies).

Actually, almost nobody pays any attention to the rule anymore. It simply isn't worth the trouble. So, the rule is moving closer and closer to the trash can, pausing on the brink only because so many English teachers and keepers of the grammar flame won't let it die.

The changers of language (who are most definitely not English teachers) seem to do a cost/benefit analysis of linguistic usage, and if the payoff in clarity isn't worth the effort to acquire the skill, they simply abandon it. It's been happening in English since roughly 450 AD, or the year English became a language.

Think about it though. How much benefit do we get from using lay/lie and sit/set "properly"? Is there any meaning lost when someone gets it wrong? No, because one is transitive and one is intransitive; one has an object, one doesn't. It's that simple. No meaning loss, no reason for the rule to be there.

Let it die; I shan't mourn.