It's a danger that reaches into every aspect of modern communication: apostrophe abuse. Every day, thousands of innocent apostrophes vanish, leaving the words where they lived bereft of meaning. They're not even safe at Amazon.

When they do turn up, they're typically enslaved into the service of some inappropriate word. Witness the well-meaning "it's" used as a possessive, as in "an apostrophe worth it's weight in gold." Oh, the humanity.

Equally as disturbing is the random appearance of these humble punctuation marks in places an apostrophe should never go -- the dark, dank underbelly of words that are neither possessives nor contractions. "We have dictionary's for sale!" (Don't try that at home.) Makes me wonder if perhaps there's been an appropriation for apostrophes in the president's new stimulus package, and now we have to use them up. (Hey, why not? It includes funding for a butterfly garden in Florida -- why can't they back a few apostrophes? Commas, however, may be excessive.)

Enough of the abuse. Apostrophes, unite and proclaim your simple truths: