John Richards, a British man who began the Apostrophe Protection Society in 2001 and has advocated for the punctuation mark ever since, is throwing in the towel. At 96, Richards is growing too old for this kind of police work. But more importantly, he told the BBC, "We have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won." Richards plans to soon shut down his society's website, which provides proper apostrophe usage guidelines (it's currently on hiatus, due to a retirement-related surge in traffic). "It seems that fewer organizations and individuals care about the correct use" of the apostrophe, he reportedly said. "Those who do will get it right but those who can't be bothered will just carry on sprinkling it about where they feel it looks nice."
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