Punctuation nerds were disappointed to learn that John Richards, 96, was closing down The Apostrophe Protection Society. “We, and our many supporters worldwide, have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won,” he wrote in November 2019.

Richards, a former reporter and copy editor, had been documenting incorrect use of this “much abused punctuation mark” since 2001. His website’s archives include a rock painted with the message “Alway’s say a prayer,” a sign for a bar “Open Sunday’s” and an establishment offering “Todays special’s.” See more here.

A misplaced apostrophe “can distort truth,” Roslyn Petelin, a writing professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, told the BBC. A new holiday in Ghana shows the importance of punctuation placement, the BBC story noted. Should the country honor a singular founder (Founder’s Day) or a group (Founders’ Day)? Apostrophes matter. (Ghana celebrated Founder’s Day beginning in 2009. Now it’s Founders’ Day.)

Others greeted Richards’ news (note spelling of possessive form of proper name that ends with s) with shrugs. “The society works from an idea where there is a stable system that has decayed in recent years,” Anne Curzan, an English professor and dean of literature, science and arts at the University of Michigan, told the BBC. But “the apostrophe is slippery and has been its entire life in English.”

Curzan notes, correctly, the danger of policing punctuation. “People will sometimes use the judgment of punctuation as a way to judge other people or win an argument,” she told the BBC.

Richards understood this. “We are aware of the way the English language is evolving during use, and do not intend any direct criticism of those who have made mistakes,” he posted on his site.

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten recently wrote that he was “pickin’ up” where the society left off. “The sins have been escalating of late, metastasized by the so-called spontaneity of social media,” he lamented. “You could collect one day’s examples of the use of ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’ and turn it into a book the thickness of ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’ which, by the way, returns 90,000 Google hits when spelled ‘The Brother’s Karamazov.’”

Richards may have retired, but his site remains online. If you need a primer on apostrophes, click here. Check it out “should you,” as Richards wrote, “wish to put right mistakes you may have inadvertently made.”